No haze of bigotry glorified the thing she contemplated, or dressed it in colours other than its own.

Even while she acknowledged the necessity of the act and its ultimate righteousness, even while she owned the obligation which lay upon her to perform it, she saw it as he would see it, and saw herself as he would see her.
True, he had done her a great wrong; and this in the eyes of some might pass for punishment.

But he had saved her life where many had perished; and, the wrong done, he had behaved to her with fantastic generosity.

In return for which she was to ruin him?
It was not hard to imagine what he would say of her, and of the reward with which she had requited him.
She pondered over it as they rode that evening, with the weltering sun in their eyes and the lengthening shadows of the oaks falling athwart the bracken which fringed the track.

Across breezy heaths and over downs, through green bottoms and by hamlets, from which every human creature fled at their approach, they ambled on by twos and threes; riding in a world of their own, so remote, so different from the real world--from which they came and to which they must return--that she could have wept in anguish, cursing God for the wickedness of man which lay so heavy on creation.