"Tell me," he commanded, "do you want your husband back again. Take your time in answering. I must know."
There was something in his voice that compelled obedience. I leaned back in my chair and shut my eyes, while I looked at the question he had put me fairly and squarely.
The question seemed to echo in my ears. I was surprised at myself that I did not at once reply with a passionate affirmative. Surely I had suffered enough to welcome Dicky's return at any time.
Ah! there was the root of the whole thing. I had suffered, how I had suffered at Dicky's hands! As my memory ran back through our stormy married life, I wondered whether it were wise—even though it should be proved to me that Dicky had not gone away with Grace Draper—to take up life with my husband again.
And then, woman-like, all the bitter recollections were shut out by other memories which came thronging into my brain, memories of Dicky's royal tenderness when he was not in a bad humor, of his voice, his smile, his lips, his arms around me, I knew, although my reason dreaded the knowledge, that unless my husband came back to me, I should never know happiness again.
I opened my eyes and looked steadily at the young physician.
"Yes, God help me. I do!" I said.
Dr. Pettit winced as if I had struck him. Then he said gravely:
"Thank you for your honesty, and believe that if there be any way in which I can serve you, I shall not hesitate to take it."
"I am sure of that," I replied earnestly, and the next moment, without a farewell glance, a touch of my hand, he went over to Katherine, and, in a voice very different in volume than the suppressed tones of his conversation to me, I heard him apologize to her for having to go away at once, heard her laughing reply that after the French hospitals she did not fear the New York streets, and then the door had closed after the young physician, whose too-evident interest in me had always disturbed me.