She hid her face in her hands and remained, crouched up, quite still, in a stupor of misery. The Canon stood over her helplessly, unable to find a word of comfort. The sight of her prostration did not move him. He had been wounded to the very depths of his being. His pride, his honour, his dignity were lacerated in their vitals. He burned with the sense of unpardonable wrong. “It is self-evident,” he said at last, “that we must part. Our remaining together would be a sin against God and an outrage upon Society.” She rased herself wearily, with one hand on the couch, and shook her head slowly. “Such things are beyond me. No one will ever know.” “There is One who will always know, Yvonne.” She pondered over the saying, as far as her tired, bewildered brain allowed. It conveyed very little meaning to her. Theology had not altered her child-like conception of the benevolence of the Creator. After a long time she was able to disentangle an idea from the confusion. “If it is a sin--don’t you love me enough to sin a little for my sake?” “Not that sin,” he said. Yvonne lifted her shoulders helplessly. “I would commit any sin for your sake,” she said. “It would seem so easy.” Curiously assorted as they were, a poetic idealism on the one side and grateful veneration on the other had hitherto bound them together. Now they were sundered leagues apart; mutual understanding was hopeless. Each was bewildered by the other’s moral attitude. The logical consequences of the discovery, that appeared so luridly devious to the Canon’s intellect, failed entirely to appeal to Yvonne. She referred them entirely to his personal inclinations. On the other hand, the Canon had a false insight into her soul that was a chilling disillusion. The beauty of her exquisite purity and innocence had always captivated in him the finer man. It was a mirage. It was gone. Emptiness remained. She was simply a graceful, non-moral being--a spiritual anomaly. Yvonne shivered, and rising, walked unsteadily to the wardrobe, whence she took a dressing-jacket. Putting it on, she returned to the couch. It was almost dark. The Canon watched her dim, slight figure as it passed him, with a strange feeling of remoteness. A hundred trivial instances of her want of moral sense crowded into his mind to support his view--her inability to see the wrong-doing of Stephen, her indefinite notions in religious matters, her mental attitude toward the girl that had gone astray, of whom she had been talking only the night before, her expressed intention of hiding this terrible discovery from him. He had been duped, not by her, but by his own romantic folly. Yet what would his life be without her--or rather without his illusion? An icy hand gripped his heart. He turned to the glimmering window and stared at the blank wall. Presently a moan struck upon his ear. He wheeled round sharply, and distinguished her lying with helpless outspread arms on the couch. Mere humanity brought him to her side.