"At least you will understand me," said the Dean. "You are not one of the small souls. Well--here it is! Lady Kitty has been an unfaithful wife. She does not attempt to deny or cover it. But in my belief she loves you still, and has always loved you. And when you married her, you must, I think, have realized that you were running no ordinary risks. The position and antecedents of her mother--the bringing up of the poor child herself--the wildness of her temperament, and the absence of anything like self-discipline and self-control, must surely have made you anxious? I certainly remember that Lady Tranmore was full of fears." He looked for a reply. "Yes," said Ashe, "I was anxious. Or, rather, I saw the risks clearly. But I was in love, and I thought that love could do everything." The Dean looked at him curiously--hesitated--and at last said: "Forgive me. Did you take your task seriously enough?--did you give Lady Kitty all the help you might?" The blue eyes scanned Ashe's face. Ashe turned away, as though the words had touched a sore. "I know very well," he said, unsteadily, "that I seemed to you and others a weak and self-indulgent fool. All I can say is, it was not in me to play the tutor and master to my wife." "She was so young, so undisciplined," said the Dean, earnestly. "Did you guard her as you might?" A touch of impatience appeared in Ashe. "Do you really think, my dear Dean," he said, as he resumed his walk up and down, "that one human being has, ultimately, any decisive power over another? If so, I am more of a believer in--fate--or liberty--I am not sure which--than you." The Dean sighed. "That you were infinitely good and loving to her we all know." "'Good'--'loving'?" said Ashe, under his breath, with a note of scorn. "I--" He restrained himself, hiding his face as he hung over the fire. There was a silence, till the Dean once more placed himself in Ashe's path. "My dear friend--you saw the risks, and yet you took them! You made the vow 'for better, for worse.' My friend, you have, so to speak, lost your venture! But let me urge on you that the obligation remains!" "What obligation?" "The obligation to the life you took into your own hands--to the soul you vowed to cherish," said the Dean, with an apostolic and passionate earnestness. Ashe stood before him, pale, and charged with resolution. "That obligation--has been cancelled--by the laws of your own Christian faith, no less than by the ordinary laws of society." "I do not so read it!" cried the Dean, with vivacity. "Men say so, 'for the hardness of their hearts.' But the divine pity which transformed men's idea of marriage could never have meant to lay it down that in marriage alone there was to be no forgiveness." "You forget your text," said Ashe, steadily. "Saving for the cause--'" His voice failed him.