As he stood up before her, he shook with emotion stronger than hers, such as women rarely feel, and such as even strong men dread. Unconsciously he held out his hands towards her and uttered a half articulate cry, trying once more to catch her in his arms.
“Kiss me—love me—oh, Hester!”
But he met her angry eyes, for she had lost the hand of reality in the labyrinth of her own imaginings and disappointments and jealousies, and she knew no longer the good from the evil, nor the truth from the acted lie.
“No—you’re acting,” she answered, cruelly—trying to be as cruel as the hurt she felt.
And she stared hardly at him. But even as she looked, a deep, purple flush rose in his white cheeks, and overspread his face, even to his forehead, and darkened all his features. And his eyes turned upwards in their sockets, as he fell forward against her, with wet, twisted lips and limp limbs—a hideous sight for woman or man to look upon.
She uttered a low, broken cry as she caught him in her arms, and he dragged her down to the floor by his weight. There he lay, almost black in the face, contorted and stiffened, yet not quite motionless, but far more repulsive by the spasmodic and writhing motion of his body than if he had lain stiff and stark as a dead body.
She had seen him thus once before now, on a winter’s night, upstairs in the studio. She did not know that it was epilepsy. She knelt beside him, horror-struck, now, for a few moments. It seemed worse in the evening glow than it had looked to her before, under the soft, artificial light in the great room.
She only hesitated a few seconds. Then she got a cushion and thrust it under his head, using all her strength to lift him a little with one arm as she did so. But she knew by experience that the unconsciousness would last a long time, and she was glad that it had come at once. On the first occasion the convulsion that preceded it had been horrible. Her own face was drawn with the anguish of intense sympathy, and she felt all the horror of her last cruel words still ringing in her ears.
She did not rise from her knees, but bent over him, and looked at him, seeing himself, as she dreamed him, through the mask of his hideous face. She touched his hands, and tried to draw them out of their contortion, but the in-turned thumbs and stiffened joints were too rigid for her to move. But she lifted his body again, straining her strength till she thought his weight must tear the slight sinews of her arms at the elbow, and she tried to turn his head to a comfortable position on the silken pillow, and stroked his silk-fine hair with gentle hands. As she did her best for him, her throat was parched, and she felt her dry lips cleaving to her teeth, and the sight of her eyes was almost failing, being burned out with horror. But no tears came to put out the fire.
At last she rose to her feet, steadying herself against the chair in which she had last sat, for she was dizzy with pain and with bending down. She gazed at him an instant; then turned and went and closed the open windows, and pulled down the shades and drew the thick curtains together. After that, groping, she found matches and lit one candle, and set it so that the light should not fall upon his eyes, if by any chance their conscious sight returned. Then she looked at him once more and left the room, softly closing the door behind her, and turning the key with infinite pains, lest any servant in the house should hear the sound. She took the key with her and went upstairs.