But she must just look at him once more, her dearly loved one! He sat there in an attitude of utter dejection, his face buried in his hands.--For long aching moments Katherine watched him, but she did not speak and life and hope and purpose died out of her, drowned in overwhelming grief. Then after this horrible silence the blood seemed to creep back to the Duke's heart, and reaction set in. He began gradually to think. His level judgment, his faculty for analyzing things, reasserted themselves, and enabled him to view the whole subject in right perspective, and a re-awakening to happiness slowly filled him. He looked up to Katherine at last as she stood there leaning against a pillar of the balustrade, and he read no humiliation or shame or contrition in her great eyes, but only a deep sorrow and tenderness and love. And suddenly he realised the splendour of her courage, the glorious force of character which had enabled her to jeopardize--nay, indeed, relinquish, love and high estate and ambition, rather than be false to herself. _For she need not have told him anything of her story._ That fact was the great proof of her truth. He had asked no questions about her past. She had made no dramatic virtue of necessity, she had done this thing that she might not soil her own soul with deceit. Of what matter was a paltry venial sin! If sin it were, the shame of which lay wholly in a too rigid convention--of what matter to him were three days in the past, long before they had met! That she was altogether his now in body and soul he had no faintest doubt. Was there any man living such a fool or puritan that he would renounce life's joy for such a foolish thing! The very qualities of courage and justice which her action in telling him had shown, would wipe out any sin and give him ample guaranties for future security and peace. Such a woman was worth all the world! And ridiculous puny conventions were of no account. Did he dream of looking upon Seraphim as degraded because she had been his love long ago, and not his wife? Of course not! Then why should he feel scorn for Katherine who had not even betrayed a husband, but had been free? Scorn was for such women as Julia Scarrisbrooke--creatures who simulated passion for one man after another, merely as a game--people who held love cheaply and who knew not even the glimmerings of obligation to their own souls. Away with all shams of the world! None of them should influence him! He had found a spirit strong and free and honest. Reality had won forever, and appearance had vanished away. So he rose and came to her again and once more took her into his arms, and bending kissed her white forehead as if in blessing.