All at once people whom I had known to be well disposed toward me, and whom I had dismissed at that, began to translate God to me. Ralph Coningsby, Cantyre, Lovey, Christian, Pyn, not to speak of others, were like reflectors that threw the rays of the great Central Sun straight into my soul. I am not declaring that there was no tarnish on the surfaces that caught those beams and transmitted them to me—probably there was—but light and warmth were poured into me for all that. Not that there was a change in their attitude toward me; the change was in my point of view, in my capacity for seeing. What I had thought of only as human aid I now perceived to be the celestial bread and wine; and where I had supposed I was living only with men, I knew I was walking with God. And yet there was a love with regard to which I could not have this peace of mind. Christian would perhaps have ascribed that defect to the fact that there was passion in it. My own fear was that, having had its inception in a moment of crime, it could never free itself from the conditions that gave it birth. After the Christmas dinner there was a change toward me in the bearing of Regina Barry and her mother. Without growing colder, they became slightly more formal; and that I understood. As they had come so far in my direction, it was for me to go some of the distance in theirs, and I didn’t. I didn’t because I couldn’t. I was like a man who would have been glad to walk if paralysis hadn’t nailed him to his seat. As, however, it was emotional paralysis and not physical, there was no means by which they could become aware of it; nor could I make up my mind to tell them. For quite apart from my damnable secret was the common, every-day fact that I had no income sufficient to maintain a wife in anything like the comfort to which Regina Barry had been accustomed. Though she might have accepted what I had to offer, I felt the usual masculine scruples as to offering it. This, too, was something that couldn’t be explained unless there was some urgent need of the explanation; and so when I was mad to go forward I had, to my shame and confusion, to hang back. Their retreat was managed with tact and dignity. During the week after Christmas I saw them on a number of occasions, always by invitation, though I had no further talk with Regina Barry alone. Two or three times I guessed she would have been willing to go out to walk with me, but I didn’t suggest it. As she had proposed it once, she could hardly do so a second time, and so we sat tamely in a sitting-room. Like that minute on Christmas Eve when she would have flown into my arms had I opened them, other minutes came and went; and I saw my coldness reacting on her visibly.