“I don’t know—”
And she sees her face in a mirror opposite, a face tortured into a ghastly smile. She knows it is her own face, and it terrifies her. She sees that it is frozen; that this hideous smile is frozen on it, and will always be there, all her life. She tries to cry out. Two hands are laid on her shoulders, and between her own face and the mirrored one her husband’s face pushes its way in; his eyes pierce into hers. She knows that unless she is strong for this last trial all is lost. And she feels that she is strong; she has regained control of her limbs, but the moment of strength is short. She raises her hands to his, which rest on her shoulders; she draws him down to her, and smiles naturally and tenderly into his eyes.
She feels his lips on her forehead, and she thinks: “It is all a dream—he will never tell—he will never take revenge like that—he is dead—really dead—and the dead are silent—”
“Why did you say that?” she hears her husband’s voice suddenly.
She starts. “What did I say?” And it seems to her as if she had told everything, here at the table—aloud before every one—and again she asks, shuddering before his horrified eyes, “What did I say?”
“The dead are silent,” her husband repeats very slowly.
“Yes,” she answers.
And she reads in his eyes that she can no longer hide anything from him. They look long and silently at each other. “Put the boy to bed,” he says at last. “You have something to tell me, have you not?”
“Yes—”
She knows now that within a few moments she will tell this man everything—this man, whom she has deceived for many years.