“I—I am afraid to tell.”
“Shall I tell you? You cannot bear to leave your old friends? You fear to go into a new country, entirely among strangers, with only your husband?”
His suddenly suspicious tone stopped the frank denial that was bursting to his wife's lips. She only said a little hurt, “If that were true, I would have told you. I always speak exactly what I think.”
“Is it so? is it indeed so?” he cried, with a lightening of countenance as sudden as its shade. “Oh, Agatha, forgive me,” and his heart seemed melting before her. “I am not good to you—but you do not quite understand me yet.”
“I feel that. Yet what can I do?”
“Nothing! Only wait I will try to cure myself without paining you. But, for the sake of our whole life's happiness, henceforward always be open with me, Agatha! Don't hide from me anything! Set your frank goodness against my wicked suspiciousness, and make me ashamed of myself, as now.”
He had not spoken so freely or with so much emotion since they were married; and his wife was deeply touched. She made no answer, but half raising herself, crept to his arms, almost as if she loved him. So she truly did, in a measure, though not with the spontaneous, self-existent love, which, once lit in a woman's breast, is like the central fire hidden in the earth's bosom, enduring through all surface variations—through summer and winter, earthquakes, floods, and storms—utterly unchangeable and indestructible. And, however wildly extravagant this simile may sound—however rare the fact it illustrates, nevertheless such Love is a great truth, possible and probable, which has existed and may exist—thank God for it!—to prove that He did not found the poetry of all humanity upon a beautiful deceit.
Something of this mystery was beginning to stir in the wife's heart; the girl-wife, married before her character was half formed—before the perfecting of real love, which, taking, as all feelings must, the impress of individual nature, was in her of slow development.
As Agatha lay, her head hidden on her husband's shoulder, guessing out of her own heart something of what was passing in his, there came to her the first longing after that oneness of spirit, without which marriage is but a false or base union, legal and sanctified before men, but, oh! how unholy in the sight of God!
The young wife felt as if now, and not until now, she could unfold to her husband all the secrets of her heart, all its foolishness, ignorance, and fears.