"Dearest," he said. "I cannot share you. The child must never be more than the symbol of our love. You must be mine—always mine. Promise me that you will always be mine alone!"
His jealousy flattered her. A gush of affection for the strong lover admitting her power, mingled with the mother-craving for protection for self and child, was a fresh impulse revivifying the old allegiance:
"Always yours, dearest—always yours!"
He looked at her searchingly, his head seeming like a carven figure of destiny, strangely significant.
"I could annihilate the thing that comes between us," he said, and she was a little frightened at his voice. It rolled away big, superhuman—she harked back, in a flitting thought, to an earlier dream-memory.
He turned to a picture on the wall, pointed to it. It was the Alpine scene.
"You and I," he said. "Always together—alone upon the heights."
"Yes! Yes!" she said, only half understanding. "Always—always yours!"
She woke with a start, her own voice ringing in her ears. Night was still a blackness in the little cubicle. She put out her hand, touched the matchboard wall to assure herself of her surroundings.