Thus they went together, those two, through the Valley of the Shadow—the all but murdered, the almost murderess—and she who had sought to slay brought back to life.
Roden, detained by some business complication in New York, heard nothing of his sweetheart’s illness until telegraphed for on the day of the crisis. It was just the balance of a mote in sunshine between life and death. Life brought the mote that won. They told him he must thank Virginia. They had all thanked her, and blessed her, with thanks and blessings which burned her guilty soul with twice the fire of red-hot maledictions. That they should bless her whom God had cursed! Ah, God, she prayed not! She would but know if God himself wept not because of the sad mockery.
A wild thought came to her with healing in its wings, as when a blade of grass forces its way between the stones in a prisoner’s cell. She had read of atonement: might she not atone?
Perhaps God would let her buy forgiveness with her life. Why had she not taken the fever; or was this fever now which rioted through her veins? She was walking homeward with her shoes slung across her shoulders. The grass felt cool and damp against her bare feet. Would it not wither where she trod? She looked backward over her shoulder with a laugh. It seemed to her that her footprints would be set as with fire across that lush June field.
Then came a curse upon her eyes. For her the earth lost all its summer green; the heavens above her bent not bluely down to meet the blue horizon. The birds ceased singing, and echoed her mirthless laugh; all nature took it up—a monstrous harmony of jovial sounds. At what were they making merry, these creatures large and small—the crickets, the wild birds, the many voices of field and forest, of air and water?
Was it at her they laughed? Did they jeer at her because she had lost her soul? Ah, for the cool green to look upon! Ah, that its blue would return to the lurid heavens! The curse of blood was upon her. Because of it she looked on all things as through a scarlet veil. Red was the vault above her; red the far-reaching line of well-loved hills; red, red, the whirling earth.
Virginia did not die. A week after her recovery she sent and asked if Roden would come to her father’s room; she wished to speak with him.
He went most willingly, having never felt as though he had sufficiently thanked her for what she had done for one who was to him as the life in his veins.
As he entered the room, in spite of all his self-control he could not restrain a slight start. Was this Virginia Herrick?—this snow maiden with eyes of fire, and tangled hair that seemed to flame about her white face as though it would consume it?—this fragile, wasted, piteous memory of a woman? She was as poor a likeness of her former self as a sketch in white chalk would be of one of Fortuny’s sunlit glares of canvas.
He came and stood beside her, wordless, and then put one of his strong brown hands kindly on her hair.