This man of integrity and honor feared to meet the
spotless brow of the woman he had misjudged. We estimate wrongdoing in
proportion to the purity of our conscience; the deed which is scarcely
a fault in some hearts, takes the proportions of a crime in certain
unsullied souls. The slightest stain on the white garment of a virgin
makes it a thing ignoble as the rags of a mendicant. Between the two
the difference lies in the misfortune of the one, the wrong-doing of
the other. God never measures repentance; he never apportions it. As
much is needed to efface a spot as to obliterate the crimes of a
lifetime. These reflections fell with all their weight on Jules;
passions, like human laws, will not pardon, and their reasoning is
more just; for are they not based upon a conscience of their own as
infallible as an instinct?
Jules finally came home pale, despondent, crushed beneath a sense of
his wrong-doing, and yet expressing in spite of himself the joy his
wife's innocence had given him. He entered her room all throbbing with
emotion; she was in bed with a high fever. He took her hand, kissed
it, and covered it with tears.
"Dear angel," he said, when they were alone, "it is repentance."
"And for what?" she answered.
As she made that reply, she laid her head back upon the pillow, closed
her eyes, and remained motionless, keeping the secret of her
sufferings that she might not frighten her husband,--the tenderness of
a mother, the delicacy of an angel! All the woman was in her answer.
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