“I have a right, and, more than a right, I have a duty to aid your better self against your worse. You, I fear, are siding with your worse self.” “You judge me hard. I have had wrongs that—” And here she stopped in a way that let me know she WOULD say no more. “That you have had wrongs, and bitter wrongs, I do not for a moment doubt. And him who has done you most wrong, you will not forgive.” “No.” “No. Not even for the sake of Him who, hanging on the tree, after all the bitterness of blows and whipping, and derision, and rudest gestures and taunts, even when the faintness of death was upon Him, cried to His Father to forgive their cruelty. He asks you to forgive the man who wronged you, and you will not—not even for Him! Oh, Catherine, Catherine!” “It is very easy to talk, Mr Walton,” she returned with forced but cool scorn. “Tell me, then,” I said, “have YOU nothing to repent of? Have YOU done no wrong in this same miserable matter?” “I do not understand you, sir,” she said, freezingly, petulantly, not sure, perhaps, or unwilling to believe, that I meant what I did mean. I was fully resolved to be plain with her now. “Catherine Weir,” I said, “did not God give you a house to keep fair and pure for Him? Did you keep it such?” “He told me lies,” she cried fiercely, with a cry that seemed to pierce through the storm over our heads, up towards the everlasting justice. “He lied, and I trusted. For his sake I sinned, and he threw me from him.” “You gave him what was not yours to give. What right had you to cast your pearl before a swine? But dare you say it was ALL FOR HIS SAKE you did it? Was it ALL self-denial? Was there no self-indulgence?” She made a broken gesture of lifting her hands to her head, let them drop by her side, and said nothing.