He had understood this before to a certain point, had read himself to a certain mark of gauge, but he had never been honestly and truly a man until this moment.

His soul was naked before his eyes.

It had been naked before, but he had laughed.
Born without real remorse, he felt it at last.

The true thing started within him.

God, the avenger, the revealer and the healer, had held up this woman as a glass to him that he might see himself.
He saw her as she had been, a docile, soft-eyed girl, untouched by anything that defames or shames, and all in a moment the man that had never been in him until now, from the time he laughed first into his mother's eyes as a babe, spoke out as simply as a child would have spoken, and told the truth.