‘Yes,’ she said with a faint smile, ‘but very true.’ She repeated after another pause, ‘What am I to do?’ Mr. Germaine had never in his life been called upon to face such a question. His knowledge of moral problems concerned the more primitive classes of humanity alone, where action is more obvious and the difficulties less great. Nothing like this could occur in a village. He sat and gazed at the woman, who was not a mere victim of passion--a foolish woman who had taken a false step and now had to own to it--but a lady of blameless honour and reputation, proud, full of dignity, the head of a well-known family, the mother of children old enough to understand her downfall and shame, with, so far as he knew, further penalties involved of leaving them, and every habit of her life, and following the man, whoever he was, into whatsoever wilderness he might seek. The Vicar felt that all the ordinary advice which he would give in such a case was stopped upon his lips. There was no parallel between what was involved here and anything that could occur among the country folk. He sat, feeling the problem beyond him, and without a word to say. ‘I must tell you more,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow. At her high strain of excitement she was scarcely aware that he hesitated to reply, and not at all that he was so much bewildered as to be beyond speech. She went on as if she had not paused at all. ‘A thing has happened--which must often happen; how can I tell you? It has been--not happy--for either. We miscalculated--ourselves and all things. If I am wrong, I am--subject--to contradiction,’ she said, suddenly stopping with a gasp as if for breath. The shades of the drama grew darker and darker. The spectator listened with unspeakable excitement and curiosity; there was a silence which seemed to throb with suspense and pain; but the figure in the background neither moved nor spoke--a large motionless figure, doubled upon itself, the shaggy head held between the hands, the face invisible, the elbows on the knees. ‘You see?’ she said, with a faint movement of her hands, as though calling his attention to that silence. There was a painful flicker of a smile about her lips; perhaps her pride, perhaps her heart, desired even at this moment a protest. She went on again: ‘It is--as I say; you will see how this--complicates--all that one thinks of--as duty. What am I to do?’ ‘Mrs. Blencarrow,’ said the clergyman--then stopped with a painful sense that even this name could be no longer hers, a perception which she divined, and responded to with again a faint, miserable smile--‘what can I say to you?’ he burst out. ‘I don’t know the circumstances; what you tell me is so little. If you are married a second time----’ She made a movement of assent with her hand. ‘Then, of course--it is a commonplace; what else can I say?--your duty to your husband must come first; it must come first. It is the most primitive, the most fundamental law.’