He was no longer uncertain. The problem of his life was solved. His mind was crystal clear. At last the time had come for the great atonement to his degraded self, the supreme sacrifice that should clear his being of stain. At last he could perform that act of renunciation that would give the strength back into his eyes to meet calmly the scrutiny of his fellow-man. Renunciation! The word rang in his ears and echoed to his footsteps. He did not doubt that it would not be to Yvonne’s lesser happiness to regain her lost environment of luxury and tender care. On the other hand, he judged her rightly enough to know that she would have found compensating pleasures in a life of privation with himself. Had it not been so, mere manliness would have decided in the Bishop’s favour. In perfect fairness (he saw now), he could have claimed her. His sacrifice was made in pure loyalty to his conscience. And it had been reserved, too, for that ignorant, wayward woman, who had groped her unguided way thus grotesquely to the Principle, to have led him thither and revealed its elemental application. He felt a stirring of shame that strengthened his manhood. The rain had stopped. The clouds broke and drifted across the heavens, and a misty moon appeared at intervals, shedding its pale light upon the unlovely thoroughfare. A fresh breeze sprang up and made Joyce, in his wet things, shiver with cold. At the nearest tavern he stopped, entered, called for some hot spirits, this time from no temptation to drown care, and asked for writing materials. Then, in the midst of the noise of thick voices and clatter of drinking vessels, he wrote at a corner of the bar his letter of renunciation. Dear Everard,--I accept your letter in the spirit in which it was written. I put the sweetest and purest of God’s creatures into your keeping. Cherish her. Yours sincerely, Stephen Joyce. A few minutes afterwards he dropped it into a pillar-box. The faint patter of its fall inside struck like a death-note upon his ear, shocked him with a sense of the irrevocable. Now that the act of renunciation was accomplished, he felt frightened. The immensity of his sacrifice began to loom before him. He became conscious of the dull premonitions of an agony hitherto undreamed of, for all his suffering in the past. Shiveringly he bent his steps homeward. The gas was burning dimly in the sitting-room. As was usual on the rare occasions when he had spent the evening out, Yvonne had brought down his bedroom candle and had laid his modest supper neatly for him. His slippers were warming by the fire. At the sight, his pain grew greater. Having taken off his wet boots and lit his candle--he could eat no supper--he turned off the gas, and went out of the room. On the landing outside Yvonne’s door were the tiny shoes she had placed there for Sarah to clean. He looked at them for a second or two and mounted the stairs hurriedly.