He repeated the curse at intervals till he reached his rooms, the hateful rooms that he rarely visited at this hour of the day. He was not, however, thinking of their hatefulness now, as he had come with an intention.
There was a fire laid in the fireplace, and he lighted it. When it was crackling sufficiently he drew Edith's photograph from its frame and, after gazing at it long and bitterly, tossed it into the blaze. He watched it blister and writhe as though it had been a living thing. The flame seized on it slowly and unwillingly, biting at the edges in a curling wreath of blue, and eating its way inward only by degrees. But it ate its way. It ate its way till the whole lovely person disappeared—first the hands, and then the bosom, and then the throat and the features. The sweet eyes still gazed up at him when everything else was gone.
He had hoped to get relief by this bit of ritual, but none came. When that which had been the semblance of his wife was no more than a little swollen rectangle of black ash, and the fire itself was dying down, he threw himself into a chair.
The reaction was not long in setting in. It set in with a voice that might have come from without, but which he nevertheless recognized as his own:
"You fool! Oh, you fool! What difference does this make to your love for her? You know you love her, and that you will never cease loving her, and that what you envy her is—the child."
What you envy her is—the child! He pondered on this. It was like an accusation. The admission of it—when admission came—was the point of departure in his heart of a new conscious yearning.