“This is my wife, and this is my house, at least for the time being; and I will do with them as I please. Because you are an aristocrat, and belong to the university, and wear better clothes than I, you think you can treat me like a dog. But a dog can bite, especially one of my breed; and if I had as many heads as Cerberus they should all have a bite at you. So help me all the infernals!”
He flung out of the room. They heard him fiercely unfastening the street door and then fiercely slamming it behind him as he rushed into the street.
Aleph at once followed him and secured the door. Returning, he resumed his work at the bed as if nothing had happened—no more color in his cheek, no more excitement in his eye, no less steadiness in his hand as he again held a cup of water to the woman’s lips. Her eyes were now open and fastened on him. Perhaps the water with which her face had been flooded had freshened her back to consciousness. Perhaps, too, the stormy scene that had just passed did something toward summoning back her retreating vitality. While she drank, cup after cup, as if it were the nectar of the immortals, she never took her eyes, eyes that seemed full of wonder, from the calm, compassionate, restful young face that bent over her. She afterward said that it seemed to her the face of some benevolent and protecting divinity.
Her skin grew moist. Great beads of sweat came out on her forehead. By degrees her eyelids drew together and she slept—slept as sleeps the infant, or as sleeps some still landscape after the drenching shower has passed.
“What food did she ask for yesterday?” said the leech to the nurse, who had just come in from another room. “Make ready the same for her against she awakes.”
“And the lady Rachel,” said Aleph, “will excuse me for suggesting that she ought now to relieve herself from her burden. The woman will do quite as well if laid quietly down.”
So Rachel softly disengaged herself, and gently placed the thin, worn, but now placid cheek on the pillow. She then went to the casement and stood there a moment reflectively. Then, turning to Aleph, she said:
“I think I will step out into the open air, and perhaps you will be kind enough to follow me.”
Of course he followed her. Such a vision of loveliness and grace as glided past him into the court is not apt to summon even a philosopher in vain. I am not sure but that he would have followed her to Britain had she asked him, instead of to that rude bench in the farther part of the court where she seated herself and invited him to do the same.