He must wait, helpless and inactive, the issue of it.
He must lie on the rack, drawn one way by love of her, drawn the other by daily and hourly suspicions, suspicions so strong and so terrible that even love could hardly cast them out.
For the voice he had heard at midnight, and the horrid laughter, which greeted the words of sacrilege--were facts.

And her subjection to Basterga, the man of evil past the evil name, was a fact.

And her terror and her avowal were facts.

He could not doubt, he could not deny them.
Only--he loved her.

He loved her even while he doubted her, even while he admitted that women as young and as innocent had been guilty of the blackest practices and the most evil arts.