The woman answered feebly, and with a sob that at once touched the gentle-hearted doctor, and turned aside his wrath—
“You took your hand away—you would not let me speak. Place your hand upon my head again, and I will tell you all.”
The troubled doctor re-seated himself with a shuddering reluctance, and renewed the manipulation.
In a few moments she appeared again to have sank into the sleep, and commenced in that slow, fragmentary manner supposed to be peculiar to such conditions:
“I see! The dark shadow is on this soul again! It is of anger and suspicion—they are both evil spirits! They strive to make it wrong the innocent! It is too holy and pure to yield! I see the golden light fill all again! The bloody hand is gone. No stain of crime remains upon this soul. It will be pardoned of God. This soul needs only human love. Through love it can be made free before God! All the past will be forgiven then—the red stains will fade! A sudden anger made it sin. Love can only intercede for this sin. Love will intercede! It will be saved!”
Here her voice became subdued into indistinct mutterings, and the doctor drew a long breath as he withdrew his hand—
“Singular woman! How could all this have been revealed to her? She must commune with spirits in this state. My story is not known to any here. I never saw or heard of her, until sent for as a physician, to visit her in this house. Strange that this fearfully passionate and repented deed should thus rise up in my path, thousands of miles away, amidst strangers, who can know nothing of me! Oh, my God! my God! Thou art indeed vengeful and just!” and the miserable man clasped his hands before his eyes and moaned. “It was my first draught of love and life. He dashed it! I was delirious in my joy, while the beams rained from her eyes into my hungry soul—hungry of beauty and of bliss. He dashed it all, and in the hot blood of my darkened madness I slew him! Oh, I slew him! His shadow, that can never be appeased, though I have given body, and soul, and substance, to relieving the sufferings of my race since that unhappy hour—it rises here again! It haunts me! Yes! yes! I feel that love alone can make me strong once more, to bear such tortures! But have I not denied myself such dreams? Have I not with dedicated heart walked humbly since in self-denying ways? Have I not clothed the orphan, fed the poor and nursed the sick? Have I not ministered amidst pestilence, and held my life as of none account that I might bring good to others? Can I be forgiven? No! no! The Pharisee recounts his holy deeds and thanks God that his life is not sinful as another man! I am not to be forgiven! I shall never know those dreams of love!”
The strong man bowed his frame and shook with agony. Could he but have looked up, a keen, quick gleam from the eyes which had been so steadily fixed upon him during this painful soliloquy, would have struck him as conveying the ecstacy of a sainted spirit over a soul repentant—or of some other feeling quite as exultant.
This curious scene was, however, most unexpectedly interrupted at this moment, by a loud yelling from the street below. The clamor was so sudden, and yet so angrily harsh, that both parties sprang forward in the alarm it caused—the woman, springing up into a sitting posture on the bed, and the doctor to go to the window.
“What is it?” she exclaimed wildly, as she tossed back her hair. “What do these cruel people want to do to me now?”