Then she was conscious that she was again looking at the Wanderer as he lay back asleep in his tall chair.  The pale and noble face expressed the stainless soul and the manly character.  She saw in it the peace she had lost, and yet knew that through him she had lost her peace for ever.

It was perhaps the last time.  Never again, perhaps, after the morning had broken, should she look on what she loved best on earth.  She would be gone, ruined, dead perhaps.  And he?  He would be still himself.  He would remember her half carelessly, half in wonder, as a woman who had once been almost his friend.  That would be all that would be left in him of her, beyond a memory of the repulsion he had felt for her deeds.

She fancied she could have met the worst in the future less hopelessly if he could have remembered her a little more kindly when all was over.  Even now, it might be in her power to cast a veil upon the pictures in his mind.  But the mere thought was horrible to her, though a few hours before she had hardly trembled at the doing of a frightful sacrilege.  In that short time the humiliation of failure, the realisation of what she had almost done, above all the ever-rising tide of a real and passionate love, had swept away many familiar landmarks in her thoughts, and had turned much to lead which had once seemed brighter than gold.  She hated the very idea of using again those arts which had so directly wrought her utter destruction.  But she longed to know that in the world whither he would doubtless go to-morrow he would bear with him one kind memory of her, one natural friendly thought not grafted upon his mind by her power, but growing of its own self in his inmost heart.  Only a friendly memory—­nothing more than that.

She rose noiselessly and came to his side and looked down into his face.  Very long she stood there, motionless as a statue, beautiful as a mourning angel.

It was so little that she asked.  It was so little compared with all she had hoped, or in comparison with all she had demanded, so little in respect of what she had given.  For she had given her soul.  And in return she asked only for one small kindly thought when all should be over.

She bent down as she stood and touched his cool forehead with her lips.

“Sleep on, my beloved,” she said in a voice that murmured softly and sadly.

She started a little at what she had done, and drew back, half afraid, like an innocent girl.  But as though he had obeyed her words, he seemed to sleep more deeply still.  He must be very tired, she thought, to sleep like that, but she was thankful that the soft kiss, the first and last, had not waked him.