"_
He had preached from these words, he had warned his hearers, with
the whole strength of the fanatical sincerity that was in him, to
beware of prevaricating with the prohibition which that verse
contained, and to accept it as literally, unreservedly, finally
forbidding the marriage of a divorced woman. He had insisted on
that plain interpretation of plain words in terms which had made
his congregation tremble. And now he stood alone in the secrecy
of his own chamber self-convicted of the deadly sin which he had
denounced--he stood, as he had told the wicked among his hearers
that they would stand at the Last Day, before the Judgment Seat.
He was unconscious of the lapse of time; he never knew whether it
was many minutes or few before the door of his room was suddenly
and softly opened. It did open, and his wife came in.
In her white dress, with a white shawl thrown over her shoulders;
her dark hair, so neat and glossy at other times, hanging tangled
about her colorless cheeks, and heightening the glassy brightness
of terror in her eyes--so he saw her; the woman put away from her
husband--the woman whose love had made his life happy and had
stained his soul with a deadly sin.
She came on to within a few paces of him without a word or a
tear, or a shadow of change passing over the dreadful rigidity of
her face.
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