The pang which seized upon him was strong indeed. In one moment he seemed to learn a thousand things by intuition—to comprehend her, himself, the past. Before he moved he knew that Villefort was not in the room, and he had caught a side glimpse of the pretty blue of Bertha’s dress.
But he had not imagined the face he saw when he turned his head to look at her. She sat in a rigid attitude, leaning against the high cushioned back of her chair, her hands clasped above her head. She stared at the fire with eyes wide and strained with the agony of tears unshed, and amid the rush of all other emotions he was peculiarly conscious of being touched by the minor one of his recognition of her look of extreme youth—the look which had been wont to touch people in the girl, Bertha Trent. He had meant to speak clearly, but his voice was only a loud whisper when he sprang up, uttering her name.
“Bertha! Bertha! Bertha!” as he flung himself upon his knees at her side.
Her answer was an actual cry, and yet it reached no higher pitch than his own intense whisper.
“I thought you were asleep?”
Her hands fell and he caught them. His sad impassioned face bowed itself upon her palms.
“I am awake, Bertha,” he groaned. “I am awake—at last.”
She regarded him with a piteous, pitying glance. She knew him with a keener, sadder knowledge than he would ever comprehend; but she did not under-estimate the depth of his misery at this one overwhelming moment. He was awake indeed and saw what he had lost.
“If you could but have borne with me a little longer,” he said. “If I had only not been so shallow and so blind. If you could but have borne with me a little longer!”
“If I could but have borne with myself a little longer,” she answered. “If I could but have borne a little longer with my poor, base pride! Because I suffered myself, I have made another suffer too.”