"It had to be taken from her forcibly to bury it. We did not speak again to one another. The friend had vanished, and the bad old woman, too, did not come again. Other people soon kept away, as I was so gruff and my wife so silent. So the days passed, and the weeks and the months. I might not enter her room. She begged me to leave her alone. I think she sat all night long beside the bed of the child and pressed kisses on his pillow. Day by day she faded. I did not notice it. It never occurred to me to send for a doctor. I wanted no human being to behold our misery.
"One evening she called me with a weak voice to her bedside, and said calmly—
"'To-night I must die, but before I do I want to confess myself to you. I have hated you since the hour you killed my joy, and much though I have struggled, and greatly though I desired to have pity on you, yet hate was stronger.'
"'The greater your love for that other,' I hissed forth.
"She raised her hand in oath.
"'Never; I was your faithful wife until the end. I thank you for all the happiness of those first years, and I forgive you the misery of the last. Kiss me, I love you once more.'
"For the first time I wept and craved her pardon for all I had done to her. She laid her hand once more on my brow, sighed a deep sigh, and was dead.
"Then I ran away into the mountains and could look at no human being. I wanted never to speak again, never to hear the sound of voices. I sought for Rest in the woods, in the rocks, with the eagles and bears, and yet I have not found her. My suffering is so great, I believe the very stars have pity on me. And old as I am, I cannot forget that I myself murdered my happiness."
The Hermit had done speaking. All the hot passions of his past life had been reflected by his features. Sorrow's eyes had looked at him fixedly, calmly, pityingly, sympathetically.