The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 215: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

204 THE EVIL GENIUS. ‘“What else can I mean? Yes! let him see her. Do—God help me, now when it’s too late!—do what you ought to have done on that accursed day which will be the blackest day in my calendar, to the end of my life.” ‘* What day do you mean ?”’ ‘‘The day when you remembered the law of man, and forgot the law of God; the day when you broke the marriage tie, the sacred marriage tie, by a divorce!” She listened—not conscious now of suspense or fear; she list- ened, with her whole heart in revolt against him. ‘You are too cruel!’ she declared. ‘‘ You can feel for me, you can understand me, you can pardon me in everything else that I have done. But you judge without mercy of the one blameless act of my life since my husband left me—the act that protected a mother in the exercise of her rights. Oh, can it be you? Can it be you?” ‘‘It can be,” he said, sighing bitterly, ‘‘ and it is.” ‘What horrible delusion possesses you?” she broke out. ‘‘ Why do you curse the happy day, the blessed day, which saw me safe in the possession of my child ?” ‘¢Ror the worst and meanest of reasons,” he answered—‘‘a selfish reason. Don’t suppose that I have spoken of divorce as one who has had occasion to think of it; I don’t think of it even now. I abhor it, because it stands between you and me. I loathe it, I curse it, because it separates us for life.” ‘‘ Separates us for life? How ?” ‘*Can you ask me?” ‘‘ Yes, I do ask you!” He looked round the room. A society of religious persons had visited the hotel, when it was first opened, and had obtained per- mission to place a copy of the Bible in every room. One of those copies lay on the chimney-piece in Catherine’s room. Bennydeck brought it to her, and placed it open on the table near which she was sitting. Heturned to the New Testament, and opened it at the Gospel of Saint Matthew. With his hand on the page, he said: ‘‘T have done my best rightly to understand the duties of a Christian. One of those duties, as I interpret them, is to let what I believe show itself in what Ido. You have seen enough of me, I hope, to know (though I have not been forward in speaking of it) that Iam, to the best of my poor ability, a faith- ful follower of the teaching of Christ. I dare not set my own interests and my own happiness above his laws. If I suffer in obeying them as I suffer now, I must stillsubmit. They are the laws of my life.” ‘‘Is it through me that you suffer ?” ‘Tt is through you!” ‘¢ Will you tell me how ?” He had already found the chapter. His tears dropped on it as he pointed to the verse. ‘‘Read,” he answered, ‘“‘ what the most compassionate of all Teachers has said, in the Sermon on the Mount; and forgive me and pity me, if you can.” ECORMICLOOOKS.e@