So Sylvester, still holding the dear hand in a warm clasp, and fearing to move lest he should disturb the quiet slumber into which the old man had fallen, remained by his father's side, his face hidden in the pillow. And as he lay, there was accomplished one of those integral spiritual changes that can only be wrought once in the lifetime of a man here and there. The White Dove of the Divine Pity overshadowed him with its wings, and he saw deeply into the mysteries of life. He beheld the unutterable pathos of man, his clogged aspirations, his heroic weakness, his piteous fortitude, his everlasting struggles. It was revealed to him that there may be more of the warm spiritual essence of humanity, in a single passionate sin than in a hundred austere virtues. His father, mother, Constance, Leroux, Ella, all of whom he, the upright, stainless man, had condemned, stood before him clothed in a new light; and by reason of their warm humanity, their struggles, their sufferings, they stood higher in the scale of being than he. He saw the loves of those two whom he had so cherished unfold in tragedy before his vision. They were two rare natures, he understood, fitted only one for the other, too fine for commoner clay. He knew the agony of the first early struggle, the eternal conflict between love and that which the world accepts as duty; the mother's heart torn asunder between the child of her body and the man of her heart's core; the ignoble husband a thing of horror in her thoughts. Then came their life together; the perfect union; the sweet community of noble end; but every step to happiness dogged by the footfall of pain. What must they have suffered, the two sensitives, with minds (in the son's fancy) of gods and hearts of little children! He remembered that there were times when his mother would stand by the window, lost to external things, and strain her vision through infinite space; and he knew now it was the yearning for the child that she had forsaken.