However, by chance they do meet again at an inn in the Alps on Engstlen Lake, below Titlis, and share several hours of spiritual communing; they scarcely touch and never kiss. Stephen leaves promptly. But Mary's companion betrays her to husband, whose decision to divorce Mary after a trial for adultery threatens them both with social disaster. In order to forestall this, Mary commits suicide. In his final remarks to his son, Stephen Stratton judges Mary to have been a victim "caught in the net of animal jealousies and thoughtless motives and ancient rigid institutions." He resolves, in the novel's final sentence: "I give myself, and if I can I will give you, to the destruction of jealousy and of the forms and shelters and instruments of jealousy, both in my own self and in the thought and laws and usage of the world."