She knew it; he knew it; everybody knew it in the parish they had left
five months ago. It had been the talk of the little southern seaside
town. He thanked God that nobody knew it, or was ever likely to know
it, here.
For Alice's folly was not any ordinary folly. It was the kind that
made the parish which was so aware of it uninhabitable to a sensitive
vicar.
He reflected that she would be clever if she made a fool of herself
here. By his decisive action in removing her from that southern
seaside town he had saved her from continuing her work. In order to do
it he had ruined his prospects. He had thrown up a good living for a
poor one; a living that might (but for Alice it certainly would) have
led to preferment for a living that could lead to nothing at all; a
living where he could make himself felt for a living where there was
nobody to feel him.
And, having done it, he was profoundly sorry for himself.
So far as Mr. Cartaret could see there had been nothing else to do. If
it had all to be done over again, he told himself that he would do it.
But there Mr. Cartaret was wrong. He couldn't have done it or anything
like it twice. It was one of those deeds, supremeful sacrificial,
that strain a man's moral energies to breaking point and render him
incapable of further sacrifice; if, indeed, it did not render further
sacrifice superfluous. Mr. Cartaret honestly felt that even an
exacting deity could require no more of him.
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