Yes, there is retribution even here for the sweet, seductive sin. “The worm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched,” begin their work long ere the cup has been emptied of its tempting poison; and the one gnaws fiercer, the other burns deeper, in proportion to the capability of good from which the sinner has fallen—in proportion to the truth and tenderness of the tortured heart that seems meant for better things. And Guinevere. Who can fathom that woman’s anguish, her shame, her self-reproach, her bitter, hopeless remorse, for whom the holy plighted love that should have made her shield, her honour, and her happiness through life, has been pierced, and shattered, and defiled by that other love which drags her to perdition, and to which she yet clings closer and closer with a warped instinct of womanly fidelity for the very sorrow and suffering it entails? The sense of personal degradation is perhaps the least of her punishment, for it is her nature when she loves to merge her own identity in another; but what of her children, if she have any? How can she bear the clear, guileless faces, the little hands clasped in prayer on her knee, the loving, trustful eyes of those simple believers to whom she, the sinner, is in the place of God? Many a woman, hesitating and hovering on the very brink of ruin, has been withheld by the tiny clasp of an infant’s hand. If that last chance should have failed her, such failure has been ever after the heaviest and least endurable of the penalties she has brought on herself.