The bitterest of all was this, that he had scarcely struggled against her will, when she had left him to himself.  He had said a few words, indeed, but he could hardly have said less, if he had meant nothing.  She knew well enough that at almost any point she could have brought him back, playing upon the fidelity of habit.  At her voice, at her glance, for one word of her pleading, he would have come back to her feet, willing to remain.  But there was no vital strength of passion in him to keep him to her against her mere spoken will.  Once or twice, in spite of herself, her voice had softened; she had felt that her face betrayed her, and had turned it away; she had known that her hands were icy cold in his, and had hoped that he would not notice it and understand, and feel, perhaps, that his accursed habit of fidelity would not let him take the freedom she thrust upon him.  He had not seen, he had not felt, he had noticed nothing; and he was gone, glad to be free from her at last, willing to marry another woman, ready to forget what had held him by a thread which he respected, but not by a bond which he could not break.  She had long guessed how it was; she knew it now—­she had known the truth last night, when she had smoothed his soft hair with her hand and had spoken softly to him, but had not got from him the promise that meant salvation to her and her husband.  Then she had known what she must do.  Once more she had tried to impose her strength upon his weakness, and had failed.  Then, almost without an outward sign, she had made up her mind.  And now—­he was gone.  That was all she knew, or remembered, for an hour, as she lay there on the sofa, biting the cushions.  It would have been far easier to kill Veronica, than to let him go.  It was not her conscience that suffered, but her heart, and it could suffer still.

It would have been worse, had that been possible, if she had known what Bosio felt at that moment.  Happily for her, she never knew.  For in the midst of the life-and-death terror of the situation, he was conscious that he rejoiced at being unexpectedly free at last from the slavery of her power.  It was perhaps the satisfaction of an aspiration, good in itself, of a long-smouldering revolt against the life of deception she had imposed upon him; but in respect of his manhood, it was mean.  For good is what men are, when they are doing good.  It cannot be the good itself, which, though it profit many, may be so done as to stab and wound the secret enemy of the man’s own heart.  The good such a man does the whole world is but the knife in his hand wherewith to hurt the one.  But Bosio hurt only himself, and little, at that, for he was almost past hurting; and Matilde never knew what he felt.  And though he suffered most of all, perhaps, between the beginning and the end, there was no one moment of all his suffering which was like the agony of the strong and evil woman when she had driven him away, and was quite alone.  She knew, now, what it meant to be alone.