, not a great
silence, for he continued to hear the cry: "Oh, how could you hurt
your Grizel so!" She scarcely knew that she had said it; but to him
who knew what she had been, and what he had changed her into, and for
what alone she was to blame, there was an unconscious pathos in it
that was terrible. It was the epitome of all that was Grizel, all that
was adorable and all that was pitiful in her. It rang in his mind like
a bell of doom. He believed its echo would not be quite gone from his
ears when he died. If all the wise men in the world had met to
consider how Grizel could most effectively say farewell to Tommy, they
could not have thought out a better sentence. However completely he
had put himself emotionally in her place with this same object, he
would have been inspired by nothing quite so good.

But they were love's dying words. He knew he could never again, though
he tried, be to Grizel what he had been. The water was spilled on the
ground. She had thought him all that was glorious in man--that was
what her love had meant; and it was spilled. There was only one way in
which he could wound her more cruelly than she was already hurt, and
that was by daring to ask her to love him still. To imply that he
thought her pride so broken, her independence, her maidenly modesty,
all that make up the loveliness of a girl, so lost that by entreaties
he could persuade her to forgive him, would destroy her altogether. It
would reveal to her how low he thought her capable of falling.

I suppose we should all like to think that it would have been thus
with Grizel, but our wishes are of small account. It was not many
minutes since she left Tommy, to be his no more, his knife still in
her heart; but she had not reached the end of the wood when all in
front of her seemed a world of goblins, and a future without him not
to be faced. He might beat her or scorn her, but not for an hour could
she exist without him. She wrung her arms in woe; the horror of what
she was doing tore her in pieces; but not all this prevented her
turning back. It could not even make her go slowly. She did not walk
back; she stole back in little runs. She knew it was her destruction,
but her arms were outstretched to the spot where she had left him.

He was no longer there, and he saw her between the firs before she
could see him. As he realized what her coming back meant, his frame
shook with pity for her. All the dignity had gone from her. She looked