Bessy's death: that the thought of what had happened
at that time was as abhorrent to you as to him--that _she_ was as
abhorrent to you. No doubt she foresaw that, had she permitted the least
doubt on that point, there would have been no need of her leaving you,
since the relation between yourself and Mr. Langhope would have been
altered--destroyed...."

"Yes. I expected that--I warned her of it. But how did she make him
think----?"

"How can I tell? To begin with, I don't know your real feeling. For all
I know she was telling the truth--and Mr. Langhope of course thought she
was."

"That I abhorred her? Oh----" he broke out, on his feet in an instant.

"Then why----?"

"Why did I let her leave me?" He strode across the room, as his habit
was in moments of agitation, turning back to her again before he
answered. "Because I _didn't_ know--didn't know anything! And because
her insisting on going away like that, without any explanation, made me
feel...imagine there was...something she didn't _want_ me to
know...something she was afraid of not being able to hide from me if we
stayed together any longer."

"Well--there was: the extent to which she loved you."

Mrs. Ansell; her hands clasped on her knee, her gaze holding his with a
kind of visionary fixity, seemed to reconstruct the history of his past,
bit by bit, with the words she was dragging out of him.

"I see it--I see it all now," she went on, with a repressed fervour that
he had never divined in her. "It was the only solution for her, as well
as for the rest of you. The more she showed her love, the more it would
have cast a doubt on her motive...the greater distance she would have
put between herself and you. And so she showed it in the only way that
was safe for both of you, by taking herself away and hiding it in her
heart; and before going, she secured your peace of mind, your future. If
she ruined anything, she rebuilt the ruin. Oh, she paid--she paid in
full!"

Justine had paid, yes--paid to the utmost limit of whatever debt toward
society she had contracted by overstepping its laws. And her resolve to
discharge the debt had been taken in a flash, as soon as she had seen
that man can commit no act alone, whether for good or evil. The extent
to which Amherst's fate was involved in hers had become clear to her
with his first word of reassurance, of faith in her motive. And
instantly a plan for releasing him had leapt full-formed into her mind,
and ha