There is in love a spiritual repulsion to which physical repulsion at its worst is but a pale shadow. Those who give love to one who cannot love may not escape the stroke of that poisoned fang. Sooner or later that shudder has to come. Only while we are young do we believe that the reverse of love is hate. We learn later, and that lesson we never forget, for love alone can teach it, that the reverse of love is egotism. The egoist cannot love. Can we endure that knowledge and go on loving? Can we be faithful, tender, selfless to one who exacts all and gives nothing, who forgets us and grieves us, even as day by day we forget and grieve our unforsaking and faithful God? Can we endure for love of man what God endures for love of us? The duke's words came back to Michael. "Why do you deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for whom she has a permanent and deep affection--for her very charming self." He had thought of her as his wife for six months and four days. Michael beat his manacled hands against the wall till they bled. He broke his teeth against his chains. If Fay had come in then he would have killed her, done her to death with the chains he had worn so patiently for her sake. [Illustration: "IF FAY HAD COME IN THEN HE WOULD HAVE KILLED HER, DONE HER TO DEATH WITH THE CHAINS HE HAD WORN SO PATIENTLY FOR HER SAKE"] And that night the convict in the next cell, who had at times such wild outbursts of impotent rage when the boats went by, heard as he lay awake a low sound of strangled anguish, that ever stifled itself into silence, and ever broke forth anew, from dark to dawn. CHAPTER XV Qui sait ce qui peut advenir de la fragilité des femmes? Qui sait jusq'où peut aller l'inconstance de ce sable mouvant?--ALFRED DE MUSSET. The Italian winter was closing in. The nights were bitter cold. Had Michael reached at last the death of love? Was its strait gate too narrow for him? After that one night he held his peace, even with himself, even with the walls of his cell. He did not sleep nor eat. He had no time to sleep or eat. He was absorbed in one idea. Michael was not a thinker. He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctive feeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compassion, never by reflection, judgment, experience. He could not really think. What he learned had to reach him some other way. His mind only bungled up against ideas, hustled them, so to speak, till they turned savage. He sat idly in his cell when his work was done. There was a kind of pressure on him, as if the walls were closing in on him. Sometimes he got up, and pushed them back with his hands. The sun had shifted his setting as the winter drew in, and for a few minutes every afternoon laid a thong of red light upon his wall. He looked at it sternly while it burned. It looked back sternly at him. He had no wish to be free now, no wish for anything.