A faint pink stole over her eyelids and her chin moved just once, but she did not look up.
"And you— ... child, it overmasters me! Every fiber of my being cries out for you! It is so different from a boy's paltry passion."
He took a step toward her as though driven by a force beyond control and said in passionate pleading, "Dearest!—let me call you that just once—did you think you could come into my starved life in the close, intimate, even though enforced comradeship of the sick-room, and leave that life just as you found it? Could show me the love and sympathy, the infinite patience and tenderness of the mother—a thing I had never known—and the dignity, the sweetness, the charm of the woman,—did you think that you could thus reveal yourself to me, and then go away and leave me the same man I had been? You never thought of it at all, did you? You were thinking of Philip—always Philip.
"But, Margaret, I was human. I thought of you. And while you rocked the child and sang soft cradle songs to him, I listened and dreamed dreams. Let me tell them to you—just once—for their very wildness. I dreamed that this was our home—such a home as I had known in my warped life only in dreams—and that we had made it, you and I; that the song on your lips was a song of joy, and that I had taught it to you; that the light in your eyes was the love-light—not for Philip, but for me; that it was my child upon your breast; that—no, do not trouble to remind me that even in my dreams I was a fool? But—my God! if only I could have had the chance another man might have!"
When he spoke again his voice had a different quality, a yearning compassion that had in it something of the maternal.
"But Margaret, that was before I knew of Philip's new danger. Since that last crushing blow has fallen upon you the feeling is so much more infinitely tender. I think a hundred times a day 'If I could take her and her helpless child to my heart and hold them there forever,—if I could bear for her the load that I have forced upon her, or help her bear it; if I could go with her upon this pitiful quest; could stand beside her and let her lean upon my strength; could comfort her—'"
She put her elbow on the table and rested her head on her hand. Two big tears rose and struggled under her closed lids. She needed comforting!
"'—and if the worst comes—as it may—could have her lay her head upon my breast and weep her grief out there—'"
The drops pushed through. What woman, oh, what woman, in her time of sorrow has not felt need of such a refuge?
"Margaret! if I could thus atone, I feel that I should ask no more of earth. But—that I have with my own hand barred myself forever from your life—this is my punishment."