“At first my whole soul cried out in horror:  ’What am I?  What have I been?  What have I done—­that such words should be written—­such a proposition made—­to me?’ The sin of it seemed to soil me; the burning wickedness, to brand me.  I seemed parted from my husband and my child, and dragged down with you into your abyss of outer darkness.

“Then, into my despair, sacred words were whispered for my comfort.  ’He was in all points tempted, like as we are, yet without sin,’ and, through my shame and tears, I saw a vision of the Holy One, standing serene and kingly on the pinnacle of the temple, where, though the devil dared to whisper the fiendish suggestion:  ‘Cast Thyself down,’ He stood His ground without a tremor—­tempted, yet unsoiled.

“So—­with this vision of my Lord before me—­I take my stand, Aubrey Treherne, upon the very summit of the holy temple of wifehood and motherhood, and I say to you:  ‘Get thee gone, Satan!’ You may have bowed my mind to the very dust in shame over your wicked words, but you cannot cause my womanhood to descend one step from off its throne.

“This being so, poor Aubrey, I feel able to forgive you the other great wrong, and to try to find words in which to prove to you the utter vileness of the sin, and yet to show you also the way out of your abyss of darkness and despair, into the clear shining of repentance, confession, and forgiveness.

“As regards the happenings of the past, between you and me—­you state them wrongly.  I did not love you, Aubrey, or I would never have sent you away.  I could have forgiven anything to an honest man, who had merely failed and fallen.

“But you had lived a double life; you had deceived me all along the line.  I had loved the man I thought you were—­the man you had led me to believe you were.  I did not love the man I found you out to be.

“I could not marry a man I did not love.  Therefore, I sent you away.  There was no question then of giving you, or not giving you, a chance to prove yourself worthy.  I was not concerned just then with what you might eventually prove yourself.  I did not love you; therefore, I could not wed you.  Though, as a side issue, it is only fair to point out—­if you wish to stand upon your possible merits—­that this letter, written four years later, confirms my then estimate of your true character.

“Aubrey, I cannot discuss my husband with you; nor can I bring myself to allude to the subject of my relations with him, or his with me.

“To defend him to you would be to degrade him in all honest eyes.

“To enlarge upon my love for him, would be like pouring crystal water into a stagnant polluted pool, in order to prove how pure was the fountain from which that water flowed.  Nothing could be gained by such a proceeding.  Pouring samples of its purity into the tainted waters of the pool, would neither prove the former, nor cleanse the latter.