The sun had risen higher, the rich vale of the Rhone, extended at his feet, lay bathed in air and light and brightness.

The burnished hills, the brown, tilled slopes, the gleaming river, the fairness of that rare landscape clad in morning freshness, gave the lie to the suspicions he had been indulging, gave the lie, there and then, to possibilities he dared not have denied in school or pulpit.

Nature spoke to his heart, and with smiling face denied the unnatural.

In Bamberg and Wurzburg and Alsace, but not here! In Magdeburg, but not here! In Edinburgh, but not here! The world of beauty and light and growth on which he looked would have none of the dark devil's world of which he had been dreaming: the dark devil's world which the sophists and churchmen and the weak-witted of twoscore generations had built up! He turned and looked at her, the scales fallen from his eyes.

Though she was still pale, she had recovered her composure and she met his gaze without blenching.