For years he had concealed his sin, and he meant to go on concealing it. That was what Maud couldn't forgive. She was angry with him for disappointing her. She had always looked up to him, even after she'd learned to hate him; but now she couldn't look up to him any more. Because he was a coward. And now she had this burden of knowledge. She didn't know what to do with it.
A man imagines that removing a medieval painting has unleashed a demon that had been trapped behind it. He is a historian, entirely uncaring of any woman he encounters, who manages to spin elaborate tales that hinge on historical religious beliefs which he resurrects not only to absolve himself of all wrongdoing endlessly but also to excuse what he plans to do; he ultimately murders an undergardener his daughter has been intimate with ostensibly convinced that a demon entered the young man. His daughter spends the rest of her life recovering from that horrific day. Not everything can be rationally explained though and one is left wondering if there is a kernel of truth somewhere in the historian's tales of demons.