All these thoughts Anne drove out of his head by begging him, in moving terms of self-reproach, to forgive her her weakness. She had regained her composure as abruptly, if not as completely, as she had lost it; and would have had him believe that the passion he had witnessed was less deep than it seemed, and rather a womanish need of tears than a proof of suffering. A minute later she was quietly preparing the evening meal, while he, with a sick heart, raised the shutters and lighted the lamp. As he looked up from the latter task, he found her eyes fixed upon him, with a peculiar intentness: and for a while afterwards he remarked that she wore an absent air. But she said nothing, and by-and-by, promising to return before bed-time, she went upstairs to her mother. The nights were at their longest, and the two had closed and lighted before five. Outside the cold stillness of a winter night and a freezing sky settled down on Geneva; within, Claude sat with sad eyes fixed on the smouldering fire. What could he do? What could he do? Wait and see her innocence outraged, her tenderness racked, her gentle body given up to unspeakable torments? The collapse which he had witnessed gave him as it were a foretaste, a bitter savour of the trials to come. It did not seem to him that he could bear even the anticipation of them. He rose, he sat down, he rose again, unable to endure the intolerable thought. He flung out his arms; his eyes, cast upwards, called God to witness that it was too much! It was too much! Some way of escape there must be. Heaven could not look down on, could not suffer such deeds in a Christian land. But men and women, girls and young children had suffered these things; had appealed and called Heaven to witness, and gone to death, and Heaven had not moved, nor the angels descended! But it could not be in her case. Some way of escape there must be. There must be. Why should she not leave her mother to her fate? A fate that could not be evaded? Why need she, whose capacity for suffering was so great, who had so much of life and love and all good things before her, remain to share the pains of one whose span in any case was nearing its end? Of one who had no longer power--or so it seemed--to meet the smallest shock, and must succumb before she knew more of suffering than the name. One whom a rude word might almost extinguish, and a rough push thrust out of life? Why remain, when to remain was to sacrifice two lives in lieu of one, to give and get nothing, to die for a prejudice? Why remain, when by remaining she could not save her mother, but, on the contrary, must inflict the sharpest pang of all, since she destroyed the being who was dearest to her mother, the being whom her mother would die to save?