sorrow, she had said--

"I will not count
On aught but being faithful;"

and faithfulness without hope--truthfulness without prospect, almost
without possibility, of tangible fulfilment--is all that lies before her
now. She accepts it in a mournful stillness, not of despair, and not of
resignation, but simply as the only true accomplishment of her life that
now remains.

The last interview with Don Silva almost oppresses us with its deep
severe solemnity. No bitterness of separation broods over it: the true
bitterness of separation fell upon her when her lover became false to
himself in the vain imagination that, so doing, he could by any
possibility be fully true to her. "Our marriage rite"--thus she
addresses the repentant and returning renegade--

"Our marriage rite
Is our resolve that we will each be true
To high allegiance, higher than our love;"

and it is thus she answers for herself, and teaches him to answer, that
question asked in the fullest and fairest flush of her love's joys and
hopes--

"But is it what we love, or how we love,
That makes true good?"

The tremulous sensitiveness of her former life has now passed beyond all