“As you spoke in the court and all my enemies hung upon your words, you became a part of this miracle which had happened in myself. You were the breathing embodiment of those august shapes which emerged in all their order and beauty from behind the dark curtains of my nature. Hour by hour, as I listened to the enchantments of your voice, it seemed to steal over me that you, my deliverer, in the empire of your youth would not only free me out of prison, but also you would deliver me out of the bondage of my own soul. Such a tumult of joy came upon me then as I could not believe could visit any human creature. The music of your lips was not only the earnest of my dreams, it was the consolation of my stains.” When the woman had finished her story she rested her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. Northcote, who had followed so strange a recital with an interest which its attendant circumstances even rendered intense, felt no longer able to withhold an ample meed of pity. And how unfathomable it appeared to him that his defence, which had been inspired at a time when all was darkness concerning her, should yet be vindicated so completely by the facts of her life. Such an intuition was an uncanny weapon. Who could wonder that this buffeted, arrested, slowly maturing, late-developing creature should see in its transactions the revelation of a supernatural power? She was base and foul, yet she was suffused with the inspiration of his strength--with a strength that had been used in ignorance, with a sordid end in view. She must indeed engage his pity, she who had prostrated herself before a chimera, she the thrice unhappy one who had prostrated herself before an idol with feet of clay. In looking at her now she had lost half of her strangeness, half of her mystery. The foulness and ugliness that must recently have been stamped upon her was now effaced. He could not doubt that since she had been brought into prison her nature had been sanctified by a new birth. This squalid criminal whom life had pressed out of the ranks had actually gained eyes to see and ears to hear. Such a confession was not a charlatan’s trick; this enkindling experience of the divine beauty was a true renascence; a cleansing of a fœtid heart by the instinct of joy. Faith in its childlike naïveté had appeared by some miracle amid that expanse of corruption. It was as though a violet had raised its head in a sewer.