Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/274

 fiercer, the other burns deeper, in proportion to the capability of good from which the sinner has fallen—in proportion to the truth and tenderness of the tortured heart that seems meant for better things.

And Guinevere. Who can fathom that woman's anguish, her shame, her self-reproach, her bitter, hopeless remorse, for whom the holy plighted love that should have made her shield, her honour, and her happiness through life, has been pierced, and shattered, and defiled by that other love which drags her to perdition, and to which she yet clings closer and closer with a warped instinct of womanly fidelity for the very sorrow and suffering it entails? The sense of personal degradation is perhaps the least of her punishment, for it is her nature when she loves to merge her own identity in another; but what of her children, if she have any? How can she bear the clear,