“Why do you ask me to do this? It leaves you neither wife nor widow.”
“I am neither wife nor widow. I am not your widow, for you live. I am not your wife, for you loathe me, and are leaving me forever.”
“I do not loathe you,” he said, in low, remorseful tones. “But you have shewn me what I was; and you have made me what I am.”
A spasm of deathly agony wrung her heart. Could he not spare her one cruel stab?
She pressed the ring upon him.
“Take it, I implore you. And if ever the remembrance returns of all that this ring once meant to us, come back to me, and place it again upon my hand.”
He took it. For what had it stood when last he held it in his hand? The complete possession of a perfect love?
He slipped it on to his little finger.
His gnawing misery grew. Why could he not say one word of kindness or of comfort to this stricken woman whose faithful heart was breaking?
His hell was within him, “where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”