"What!" he exclaimed. "Has my mother——"
He stopped and gazed at her, wondering. Some powerful emotion he could not comprehend expressed itself in her face.
"She does not speak of it often," she said. "She thinks of it always."
"Yes," he answered. "I know that. She is afraid. She is haunted by her dread of it—and," his voice dropping, "so am I."
He felt it almost unnatural that he should speak so freely. He had found it rather difficult to accustom himself to her presence in the house, sometimes he had even been repelled by it, and yet, just at this moment, he felt somehow as if they stood upon the same platform and were near each other.
"It will break loose some day," he cried. "And the day is not far off. I shall run the risk and either win or lose. I fight hard for every day of dull quiet I gain. When I look back over the past I feel that perhaps I am holding a chained devil; but when I look forward I forget, and doubt seems folly."
"In your place," she said, "I would risk my life upon it!"
The passion in her voice amazed him. He comprehended even less clearly than before.
"I know what it has cost," she said. "No one better. I am afraid to pass the door of the room where it lies, in the dark. It is like a dead thing, always there. Sometimes I fancy it is not alone and that the door might open and show me some one with it."
"What do you mean?" he said. "You speak as if——"