To pierce the curtain of thick night and behold her who was lost to him; her who loved him as man had been seldom loved.
The fierce temptation struck him as a sudden squall strikes a ship with all her canvas spread.

For a moment mast and rigging stood the strain, then they went by the board.

He would do it if it killed him; but the task must be undertaken properly, deliberately, and above all in secret.
To-morrow he would begin.

When he had satisfied himself; when he had seen; then he could always stop.
A few minutes later Morris stood beside his wife's bed.

There she lay, in the first perfection of young motherhood and beauty, a lovely, white-wrapped vision with straying golden hair; her sweet, rounded face pink with the flush of sleep, and the long lashes lying like little shadows on her cheek.
Morris looked at her, and his doubts returned.