The Dean looked at him curiously—­hesitated—­and at last said: 

“Forgive me.  Did you take your task seriously enough?—­did you give Lady Kitty all the help you might?”

The blue eyes scanned Ashe’s face.  Ashe turned away, as though the words had touched a sore.

“I know very well,” he said, unsteadily, “that I seemed to you and others a weak and self-indulgent fool.  All I can say is, it was not in me to play the tutor and master to my wife.”

“She was so young, so undisciplined,” said the Dean, earnestly.  “Did you guard her as you might?”

A touch of impatience appeared in Ashe.

“Do you really think, my dear Dean,” he said, as he resumed his walk up and down, “that one human being has, ultimately, any decisive power over another?  If so, I am more of a believer in—­fate—­or liberty—­I am not sure which—­than you.”

The Dean sighed.

“That you were infinitely good and loving to her we all know.”

“’Good’—­’loving’?” said Ashe, under his breath, with a note of scorn.  “I—­”

He restrained himself, hiding his face as he hung over the fire.

There was a silence, till the Dean once more placed himself in Ashe’s path.  “My dear friend—­you saw the risks, and yet you took them!  You made the vow ‘for better, for worse.’  My friend, you have, so to speak, lost your venture!  But let me urge on you that the obligation remains!”

“What obligation?”

“The obligation to the life you took into your own hands—­to the soul you vowed to cherish,” said the Dean, with an apostolic and passionate earnestness.

Ashe stood before him, pale, and charged with resolution.

“That obligation—­has been cancelled—­by the laws of your own Christian faith, no less than by the ordinary laws of society.”

“I do not so read it!” cried the Dean, with vivacity.  “Men say so, ’for the hardness of their hearts.’  But the divine pity which transformed men’s idea of marriage could never have meant to lay it down that in marriage alone there was to be no forgiveness.”

“You forget your text,” said Ashe, steadily.  “Saving for the cause—­’” His voice failed him.

“Permissive!” was the Dean’s eager reply—­“permissive only.  There are cases, I grant you—­cases of impenitent wickedness—­where the higher law is suspended, finds no chance to act—­where relief from the bond is itself mercy and justice.  But the higher law is always there.  You know the formula—­’It was said by them of old time.  But I say unto you—­’ And then follows the new law of a new society.  And so in marriage.  If love has the smallest room to work—­if forgiveness can find the narrowest foothold—­love and forgiveness are imposed on—­demanded of—­the Christian!—­here as everywhere else.  Love and forgiveness—­not penalty and hate!”

“There is no question of hate—­and—­I doubt whether I am a Christian,” said Ashe, quietly, turning away.