He wondered if he had done right by her.

She deserved a husband who would be saved into the kingdom, while he who had married her was irrevocably lost.
There had been a time when he read with freshened hope the promises of forgiveness in that strange New Testament.

Once he had even believed that these might save him; that he was again numbered with the elect.
But when this belief had grown firm, so that he could seem to rest his weight upon it, he felt it fall away to nothing under him, and the truth he had divined that day in the desert was again bared before him.

He saw that how many times soever God might forgive the sins of a man, it would avail that man nothing unless he could forgive himself.

He knew at last that in his own soul was fixed a gauge of right, unbending and implacable when wrong had been done, waiting to be reckoned with at the very last even though the great God should condone his sin.