After awhile he rose, drank some water, lifted the shade and let the moonlight in. Then about that little room he walked with God through the long night, telling Him his sorrow and perplexity. And there is a depth in our own nature where the divine and human are one. That night Basil Stanhope found it, and henceforward knew that the bitterness of death was behind him, not before. "I made my nest too dear on earth," he sighed, "and it has been swept bare--that is, that I may build in heaven."
Now, the revelation of sorrow is the clearest of all revelations. Stanhope understood that hour what he must do. No doubts weakened his course. He went back to the house Dora called "hers," took away what he valued, and while the servants were eating their breakfast and talking over his marital troubles, he passed across its threshold for the last time. He told no one where he was going; he dropped as silently and dumbly out of the life that had known him as a stone dropped into mid-ocean.
Ethel considered herself fortunate in being from home at the time this disastrous culmination of Basil Stanhope's married life was reached. On that same morning the Judge, accompanied by Ruth and herself, had gone to Lenox to spend the holidays with some old friends, and she was quite ignorant of the matter when she returned after the New Year. Bryce was her first informant. He called specially to give her the news. He said his sister had been too ill and too busy to write. He had no word of sympathy for the unhappy pair. He spoke only of the anxiety it had caused him. "He was now engaged," he said, "to Miss Caldwell, and she was such an extremely proper, innocent lady, and a member of St. Jude's, it had really been a trying time for her." Bryce also reminded Ethel that he had been against Basil Stanhope from the first. "He had always known how that marriage would end," and so on.
Ethel declined to give any opinion. "She must hear both sides," she said. "Dora had been so reasonable lately, she had appeared happy."
"Oh, Dora is a little fox," he replied; "she doubles on herself always."
Ruth was properly regretful. She wondered "if any married woman was really happy." She did not apparently concern herself about Basil. The Judge rather leaned to Basil's consideration. He understood that Dora's overt act had shattered his professional career as well as his personal happiness. He could feel for the man there. "My dears," he said, with his dilettante air, "the goddess Calamity is delicate, and her feet are tender. She treads not upon the ground, but makes her path upon the hearts of men." In this non-committal way he gave his comment, for he usually found a bit of classical wisdom to fit modern emergencies, and the habit had imparted an antique bon-ton to his conversation. Ethel could only wonder at the lack of real sympathy.