“Tell me, now, how much you want,” she said, like one half lifeless.
* * * * * * * *
It was dusk when, lamp in hand, she stole up the stairs to their bedroom. He was lying asleep, sunk in the reaction from emotion. But the light on his face awoke him. He opened his eyes, drowsily, without speculation at first; but in a moment wide apprehension sprung to them. He half started up.
“Yolande!”
“Hush!” she said. “It was nothing—somebody who had come on business, and is gone. Think no more about it. Husband—dear husband, have you prayed to-night?”
He whispered a negative. She threw her arms about his neck.
“O, Louis, we have been happy during this year, have we not?”
He returned her caresses. But his hands were damp; his throat was stiff; he could not answer. She released him feverishly.
“Get up and pray now,” she said. “We have forgotten God in our deep content—forgotten, in our bodies’ loves, the blows and anguish which His flesh suffered to redeem them.”
He rose, unquestioning, and knelt by the bedside. He prayed that she might not know, that his suspicions might be unfounded, that the burden of that knowledge might never be hers—not that he might find strength to ask her if it were. He prayed and prayed, until the chillness of the night air seized his frail body with a very ague of shivering. Then she, kneeling beside him, was smitten with remorse, and blamed her thoughtlessness, and got him into bed again with all speed, and watched beside him till he was once more warm and restful. Then, his comfort was so great, her beauty so pitiful, he held out rapturous arms to her, and wooed her to his heart. Shrinking, reluctant, she surrendered passively. Had he not wounded his soul to save hers? How could she deny him the fruits of that wild sacrifice. She was a murderer’s wife.