Beatrice presses Dante to speak. She wants his confession — not for punishment but for healing, for acknowledgment. He struggles. His voice barely emerges. He admits: yes, the present goods, with their false pleasures, turned him away when her face was hidden. He wept as he confessed it. Beatrice accepts the admission but presses further: why did he not, having fallen once, resolve to rise? What other beautiful things, what other promises, kept him? Dante bows his head; his chin drops to his chest. He cannot answer. There is nothing to say. Her question is unanswerable because the answer is simply: weakness, distraction, the gravitational pull of lesser things. Grief overcomes him and he faints.
He comes back to consciousness to find Matelda drawing him through the Lethe — the river of forgetting. He is submerged in its sweet waters, and the memories of sin — not the facts of what he did, but the taste and weight of guilt — are washed away. He is brought to the other bank and presented to Beatrice, who stands surrounded by the four cardinal virtues. She tells him: open your eyes; look at what we have brought you to. He raises his eyes and sees, reflected in her eyes, the Gryphon — alternating between its two natures, divine and human. He is seeing Christ reflected in Beatrice's eyes. Beatrice unveils her face — the sun is not more dazzling. The light defeats him again. He cannot look directly.