"Very well, mamma."
In the door she turned again:
"Should someone else come—I cannot—"
Irene halted a number of steps from her mother in the formal posture of a society young lady, and said:
"Be at rest, mamma; I shall not go a step away, and I shall not let anyone interrupt you. Not even father if you wish—perhaps to-morrow would be better?"
"Oh, no, no!" cried Malvina, with sudden animation. "On the contrary, as soon as possible—beg your father to come, and let me know at the earliest."
"Very well, mamma."
Malvina closed the bedroom door, advanced a few steps, and fell on her knees at her richly covered bed. Amid furniture, finished in yellow damask, on a downy bed, covered with cambric and lace, she raised her clasped hands, and said, in whispers broken with sobs:
"O God! O God! O God!"
She was of those weak beings who to live need heartfelt love as much as air, and who are infected by this love without power of resisting it. To such a love had she yielded once in the chill and emptiness of rich drawing rooms. That was a happening of long ago; she was the weaker at that time because she was caught by a breeze from the spring of her life, passed in the company of that man who was casting himself at her feet then. In that moment of yielding a pebble had dropped on her, the weight of which increased with the course of years and the growth of her children. She had not thought for an instant that she was the heroine of a drama. On the contrary, she repeated, with a face always blushing from shame: "Weak! weak! weak!" and, from a time rather remote, it was joined with another word, "Guilty." She was weak, still to-day she had found strength at last to cut one of those knots in which her life had been involved so repulsively. Oh, that the other might be torn apart quickly; then she could go far from the world into lone obscurity, an abyss occupied only by her endless penitence. In her head a plan had matured. She wished to speak with Darvid as soon as possible, and she doubted not that in the near future he would agree with her. Her daughters? Well, was it not better that such a mother should leave them, vanish from their eyes?