But had she ever so felt as to be confident that if
Omnipotence had offered to undo the past, she would have had the past
undone? There had perhaps been one such occasion quite early in the
marriage, and the woe of it had been terrible; but it was followed almost
immediately by a "moment," by an inspired outbreak of his over some case
in the paper, by a vow to see an injustice remedied, a ceaseless,
unsparing, unpaid month's work to that end, a triumph over wrong and
prejudice in the cause of a helpless woman. He had nearly killed himself
over it, the doctor said, and May had watched by his bed, without tears,
but with a conviction that if he died she must die also; because it
seemed as though he had faced death rather than her condemnation. That
was not the truth of it, of course, but she and he between them had made
it seem the truth to her.
And now, with all the meanness of this abandonment of his friends, with
all this fawning on the moneyed Wesleyans before her eyes, she could not
declare that she repented, lest he, waking again to greatness, should
plunge her again into the depths of abasement.
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