Wentworth had never been callous or hard-hearted at his worst: and now at his best, compassion and remorse overwhelmed him. That he should receive that information, that appeal, with Grace’s hand in his, gave his whole nature a shock. He felt that he must take himself away out of her presence, and remove the recollections, the scenes that rushed back upon his mind, the image thus thrust before his eyes, away from her at least, even if he did not answer the appeal. He was not of the iron fibre of some men. He could not carry these two images side by side. And then how did he dare resist such an appeal. ‘You were the first.’ He had said to himself that he was responsible for the ruin of no other human creature. He was not a seducer. He had used no wiles to draw anyone from the paths of virtue. Is that a defence when life and death are in the balance, and a man is arraigned before the tribunal of his own conscience? When he went back into the recesses of his memory and beheld all that was brought before him, as by a flash of lightning, and then remembered the position in which he now stood, he covered his face with his hands. He was ashamed to the bottom of his soul. The way of transgressors is hard. To anyone who had known all the facts, it would have appeared that Oliver Wentworth was the most striking example of undeserved happiness. He had no right to all the good things that had fallen into his lap. He had deserved a very different return for all that he had done; yet when he set out upon that railway journey, with the touch of Grace’s hand still warm in his, the shame and misery in his mind were a not unfit representation of those tortures which to most men are more real than the fire and brimstone of the bottomless pit. How was the recollection of what was passed ever to be washed out of his memory? He might repent--he had repented--and never so bitterly as now: but how was he to forget? In the great words of mercy it is proclaimed that God forgets as well as forgives: ‘Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.’ But the sinner, how is he to forget, even when he believes that he is forgiven?