He went by with a slow step. He could not help seeing the open door. But he did not stop or turn, until he reached the stairhead of the second flight; then he had to face this way again. And as he passed around the railing, he looked up; for Bel was standing where she had stood last night. She had put herself in his way; but she had not done it lightly, with any half intent, to give _him_ new opportunity for words. There was a pure, gentle quiet in her face; she had something herself to say. He saw it, and went back. He colored, as he gave her his hand. Her face was pale. "Come in a moment, Mr. Hewland," said the simple, girlish, voice. He followed her in. "You asked me questions last night, and I did not know how to answer them. I want to ask you one question, now." She had brought him to the side of the round table, upon whose red cloth the large Bible lay. It was open at the place where she had read it. She put her finger on the page, and made him look. She drew the finger slowly down from line to line, as if she were pointing for a little child to read; and his eye followed it. "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh. "Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." "Is that the way you will make a home and give it to me,--before them all?" she said. He forgot the sophistries he might have used; he forgot to say that it _was_ to leave father and mother and join himself to her, that he had purposed; he forgot to tell her again that he would be true to her all his life, and that nothing should put them asunder. He did not take up those words, as men have done, and say that God had joined their hearts together and made them in his sight one. The angels were beside him, in his turn, as he read. Those sentences of the Christ, shining up at him from the page, were like the look turned back upon Peter, showing him his sin. "One flesh:" to be seen and known as one. To have one body of living; to be outwardly joined before the face of men. None to set them asunder, or hold them separate by thought, or accident, or misunderstanding. This was the sacred acknowledgment of man and wife, and he knew that he had not meant to make it. As he stood there, silent, she knew it too. She knew that she should not have been his wife before anybody. Her young face grew paler, and turned stern. His flushed: a slow, burning, relentless flush, that betrayed him, marking him like Cain. He lowered his eyes in the heat of it, and stood so before the child. She looked steadfastly at him for one instant; then she shut the book, and turned away, delivering him from the condemning light of her presence. "No: I will not go to that little home with you," she said with a grief and scorn mingled in her voice, as they might have been in the voice of an angel.