"I don't suppose even that matters much," she answered wearily, "but if you care to know, Ben, George and Bonny found me when I was alone and—and very unhappy, and they brought me with them when they came down to hunt. They are hunting now."
"You were alone and unhappy?" I said, for George Bolingbroke and Bonny Marshall had faded from me into the region of utterly indifferent things.
"It was that I wanted to tell you the morning you couldn't wait," she returned gently; "I had kept it from you the night before because I saw that you were so tired and needed sleep. But—but I had seen two doctors, both had told me that I was ill, that I had some trouble of the spine, that I might be an invalid—a useless invalid, if I lived, that—that there would never be another child—that—"
Her voice faltered and ceased, for crossing the room with a bound, I had gathered her to my breast, and was bending over her in an intensity, a violence of love, crushing back her hands on her bosom, while I kissed her face, her throat, her hair, her dress even, as I had never kissed her in the early days of our marriage. The passion of happiness in that radiant prime was pale and bloodless beside the passion of sorrow which shook me now.
"Stop, stop, Ben," she said, struggling to be free, "let me go. You are hurting me."
"I shall never stop, I shall never let you go," I answered, "I shall hold you forever, even if it hurts you."
CHAPTER XXXV
THE ULTIMATE CHOICE
We carried her home next day in George's motor car, ploughing with difficulty over the heavy roads, which in a month's time would have become impassable. A golden morning had followed the rain; the sun shone clear, the wind sang in the bronzed tree-tops, and on the low hills to the right of us, the harvested corn ricks stood out illuminated against a deep blue sky. When the brown-winged birds flew, as they sometimes did, across the road, her eyes measured their flight with a look in which there was none of the radiant impulse I had seen on that afternoon when she gazed after the flying swallows. She spoke but seldom, and then it was merely to thank me when I wrapped the fur rug about her, or to reply to a question of George's with a smile that had in it a touching helplessness, a pathetic courage. And this helplessness, this courage, brought to my memory the sound of her voice when she had called George's name aloud in her terror. Even after we had reached home, and when she and I stood alone, for a minute, before the fire in her room, I felt still that something within her—something immaterial and flamelike that was her soul—turned from me, seeking always a clearer and a diviner air.