“Don’t speak of singing, dear,” she said, trying to smile, though he could not see whether she did or not.
“No, darling—forgive me. I’ll never speak of it again. I’ll never sing again as long as I live, if you don’t want me to.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she answered. “It’s only now—till I forget. And, Walter, dear—I don’t want you to promise it any more—I’d rather not, really.”
Still she turned away, but he bent over, drawing her closer to him, and he lifted her face with his hand under her chin. The eyelids drooped as she suffered her head to fall back over his arm, and she shut out the sight of his eyes from her own. He murmured soft words in his low voice, in golden tones.
“Darling—precious—sweet one!”
And he repeated the words and others, as her features softened, and her parted lips smiled at his. And still he pressed her to him, and spoke to her, and looked at her with burning eyes. So they might have been reconciled then and there, had Fate willed it. But Fate was there with her little creeping hand full of the tiny mischief that decides between life and death when no one knows.
Fate willed that at that moment Crowdie should be irritated by something in his throat. Just as he was speaking so softly, so sweetly that the exquisite sound almost lulled her to sleep, while the passionate tears still wet her cheek,—just as his face was near hers, he felt it coming, insignificant in itself, ridiculous by reason of the moment at which it came, yet irresistible in its littleness. He struggled against it, and grew conscious of what he was saying, and his voice lost its passionate tenderness. He strove to fight it down, that horrible little tickling spasm just in the vocal chords, for he knew how much it might mean both to her and to him, that her forgiving mood should carry them both to the kiss of peace. But Fate was there, irresistible and little, as surely as though she had stalked gigantic, sword in hand, through the door, to smite them both. In the midst of the very sweetest word of all, it came—the word rang false, he turned his face away and coughed to clear his throat. But the false note had rung.
Hester sprang to her feet, and thrust him from her. To her it had all been false,—the words, the tone, the caresses. How could a man in the earnestness of passion, midway in love’s eloquence, wish to stop—and cough? She did not think nor reason, as she turned upon him in the anguish of her disappointment.
“How could I believe you—even for a moment?” she cried, standing back from him. “Oh, what an actor you are!”
But he had not been acting, save that he had done what his instinct had at first told him was wisest, in beginning to speak to her when she had burst into tears. With the first word, the first caress, with the touch of her, and the sweet, unscented, living air of her, the passion that had truly ruled his faultful life for years took hold of him with strength and main, and rang the leading changes of his being. And then she broke it short.