“Yes,” she said, “and the word?”
The shame of its utterance should be mine, she meant. If I had shrunk from the challenge, it would have been to discredit my claim to the greater wrong.
“Where your husband lies hidden?” I said, with a cold fury at my heart.
“God forgive you,” she answered only, and fell back.
Her assumption of the holier strength, of the worser grievance, stung me to madness. I leapt and clutched her by the wrist.
“Fool!” I shrieked; “do you know what you are bringing on yourself? Do you know how they will kill you? It is not, as in Paris, a shock, and a sob, and forgetfulness. They will push you from a ladder, and one will spring and swing himself by your feet, and another leap upon your shoulders, and squat there like a hideous toad, making sport for the crowd. And you will be minutes choking and dying, and not one to pity or relieve you!”
Her eyes had a smile of agony in them; but still it was a smile, and I could have torn myself in my impotence to change it.
“Ah, yes, one!” she said; “my little unborn baby.”
I sprang back.
“Wretch! Your obstinacy murders it!”