ot utterly without excuse.

She had seen him under other aspects than the aspect which he presented
now. She had seen him, the hero of the river-race, the first and
foremost man in a trial of strength and skill which had roused the
enthusiasm of all England. She had seen him, the central object of the
interest of a nation; the idol of the popular worship and the popular
applause. _His_ were the arms whose muscle was celebrated in the
newspapers. _He_ was first among the heroes hailed by ten thousand
roaring throats as the pride and flower of England. A woman, in an
atmosphere of red-hot enthusiasm, witnesses the apotheosis of Physical
Strength. Is it reasonable--is it just--to expect her to ask herself,
in cold blood, What (morally and intellectually) is all this worth?--and
that, when the man who is the object of the apotheosis, notices her, is
presented to her, finds her to his taste, and singles her out from the
rest? No. While humanity is humanity, the woman is not utterly without
excuse.

Has she escaped, without suffering for it?

Look at her as she stands there, tortured by the knowledge of her own
secret--the hideous secret which she is hiding from the innocent girl,
whom she loves with a sister's love. Look at her, bowed down under a
humiliation which is unutterable in words. She has seen him below the
surface--now, when it is too late. She rates him at his true value--now,
when her reputation is at his mercy. Ask her the question: What was
there to love in a man who can speak to you as that man has spoken,
who can treat you as that man is treating you now? you so clever, so
cultivated, so refined--what, in Heaven's name, could _you_ see in him?
Ask her that, and she will have no answer to give. She will not even
remind you that he was once your model of manly beauty, too--that you
waved your handkerchief till you could wave it no longer, when he took
his seat, with the others, in the boat--that your heart was like to jump
out of your bosom, on that later occasion when he leaped the last
hurdle at the foot-race, and won it by a head. In the bitterness of her
remorse, she will not even seek for _that_ excuse for herself. Is there
no atoning suffering to be seen here? Do your sympathies shrink from
such a character as this? Follow her, good friends of virtue, on the
pilgrimage that leads, by steep and thorny ways, to the purer atmosphere
and the nobler life. Your fellow-creature, who has sinned and has
repente