He had insisted on that plain interpretation of plain words in terms which had made his congregation tremble.

And now he stood alone in the secrecy of his own chamber self-convicted of the deadly sin which he had denounced--he stood, as he had told the wicked among his hearers that they would stand at the Last Day, before the Judgment Seat.
He was unconscious of the lapse of time; he never knew whether it was many minutes or few before the door of his room was suddenly and softly opened.

It did open, and his wife came in.
In her white dress, with a white shawl thrown over her shoulders; her dark hair, so neat and glossy at other times, hanging tangled about her colorless cheeks, and heightening the glassy brightness of terror in her eyes--so he saw her; the woman put away from her husband--the woman whose love had made his life happy and had stained his soul with a deadly sin.
She came on to within a few paces of him without a word or a tear, or a shadow of change passing over the dreadful rigidity of her face.

She looked at him with a strange look; she pointed to the newspaper crumpled in his hand with a strange gesture; she spoke to him in a strange voice.
"You know it!" she said.
His eyes met hers--she shrank from them--turned--and laid her arms and her head heavily against the wall.
"Oh, Alfred," she said, "I was so lonely in the world, and I was so fond of you!" The woman's delicacy, the woman's trembling tenderness welled up from her heart, and touched her voice with a tone of its old sweetness as she murmured those simple words.
She said no more.

Her confession of her fault, her appeal to their past love for pardon, were both poured forth in that one sentence.