Marguerite suddenly felt intense sympathy for her husband.
The moral crisis she had just gone through made her feel indulgent
towards the faults, the delinquencies, of others.
How thoroughly a human being can be buffeted and overmastered
by Fate, had been borne in upon her with appalling force. Had anyone
told her a week ago that she would stoop to spy upon her friends, that
she would betray a brave and unsuspecting man into the hands of a
relentless enemy, she would have laughed the idea to scorn.
Yet she had done these things; anon, perhaps the death of that
brave man would be at her door, just as two years ago the Marquis de
St. Cyr had perished through a thoughtless words of hers; but in that
case she was morally innocent--she had meant no serious harm--fate
merely had stepped in. But this time she had done a thing that
obviously was base, had done it deliberately, for a motive which,
perhaps, high moralists would not even appreciate.
As she felt her husband's strong arm beside her, she also felt
how much more he would dislike and despise her, if he knew of this
night's work. Thus human beings judge of one another, with but little
reason, and no charity.
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