however, remained at first unnoticed: there was enough in the letter
itself to bewilder and stupefy its unfortunate reader. He went over it
again and again, trying, trying to understand it; to make certain that
there was not some strange mistake, some other meaning in it than that
which first appeared. But no; it was distinct enough, though the writing
was strangely unsteady, as if the writer's hand had trembled at the
task. The task of doing what? Only of destroying a hope; and hope is not
life, nor even youth, or strength, or sense, or capacity for work, and
yet when Maurice rose from his solitary breakfast-table, and carried his
letters away to his own room, although he looked and moved, and even
spoke to a passing servant just as usual, he felt as if he had been
suddenly paralysed, and struck down from vigorous life into the shadow
of death. He sat in his room and tried to think, but no thoughts came;
only a perpetual reiteration of the words, "You and Lucia must not meet
again." Over and over, and over again, the same still incomprehensible
sentence kept ringing in his ears. It was much the same thing as if some
power had said to him, "You must put away from you, divorce, and utterly
forget, all your past life; all your nature, as it has grown up, to this
present time; and take a different individuality." The two things might
equally well be said, for they were equally impossible. He laughed as
this idea struck him. His senses were beginning to come back, and they
told him plainly enough that any separation from Lucia, except by her
own free choice and will, was as impossible as if they were already
vowed to each other "till death us do part." There was so much comfort
in this conviction that at last he was able to turn to the latter part
of the letter, and to occupy himself with that mysterious yet terrible
sentence, which said that Lucia, his purest and loveliest of women, whom
all his long intimacy had not been able to bring down from the pedestal
of honour and tender reverence on which his love had placed her, would
bring a blot upon her husband's name.