'Yes; she was playing on the door-step. She looked so beautiful! I--I kissed her!'
All the love that woman's heart can feel, all the tenderness of which woman's love is capable, were expressed in the tone in which she uttered these simple words. She placed her fingers on her lips, and dwelt upon the memory of the kiss with tearful eyes, with heart that ached with excess of love.
'Did I tell you that last week I tried again to get work, Saul?'
'No,' he said; 'you failed!' As if he knew for certain with what result.
'Yes; I failed,' she repeated sadly.
'I ask myself sometimes if I am a man,' exclaimed Saul, in contempt of himself, spurning himself as it were; 'if I have anything of a man's spirit left within me. Mrs. Naldret said something of that sort to me this very night--not unkindly, but with a good purpose. When I think of myself as I was many years ago, it seems to me that I am transformed. And the future! Good God! what lies in it for us?'
'I am a tie upon you, Saul.'
'A tie upon me!' he said, in a tone of wonder. 'Jane, you are my salvation! But for you I should have drifted into God knows what. You are at once my joy and my remorse.'
He took from the mantelshelf a broken piece of looking-glass, and gazed at the reflection of his face. A bold and handsome face, but with deeper lines in it than his years, which were not more than thirty-two or three, warranted. Strong passion and dissipation had left striking marks behind them, but his clear blue eyes were as yet undimmed, and shone with a lustre which denoted that there was vigour still in him. His mouth was large, and the lips were the most noticeable features in his face; they were the lips of one to whom eloquence came as a natural gift, firm, and tremulous when need be. The change that he saw in himself as he looked back to the time gone by gave point and bitterness to his next words.
'I was not like this once. When you first saw me, Jane, these marks and lines were wanting--they have come all too soon. But no one is to blame but I. I have brought it all on myself. On myself! On you!--you suffer with me, patiently, uncomplainingly. You have a greater load than I to bear; and you will not let me lighten it.'