The advice of Constantius returned to my mind, but like the meeting of two tides, it was only to increase the tumult within. I felt the floor shake under my hurried tread. I smote my forehead—it was covered with drops of agony. The voices within my wife’s chamber had ceased. But was I to rouse her from her sleep, perhaps the last quiet sleep that she was ever to take, only to hear intelligence that must make her miserable?
I leaned my throbbing forehead upon one of the marble tables, as if to imbibe coolness from the stone. I felt a light hand upon mine. Miriam stood beside me.
Miriam’s Comfort
“Salathiel!” pronounced she in an unshaken voice, “there is something painful on your mind. Whether it be only a duty on your part to disclose it to me, I shall not say; but if you think me fit to share your happier hours, must I have the humiliation of feeling that I am to be excluded from your confidence in the day when those hours may be darkened?”
I was silent, for to speak was beyond my strength, but I pressed her delicate fingers to my bosom.
“Misfortune, my dear husband,” resumed she, “is trivial but when it reaches the mind. Oh, rather let me encounter it in the bitterest privations of poverty and exile; rather let me be a nameless outcast to the latest year I have to live, than feel the bitterness of being forgotten by the heart to which, come life or death, mine is bound forever and ever.”
I glanced up at her. Tears dropped on her cheeks, but her voice was firm.
“I have observed you,” said she, “in deep agitation during the day, but I forbore to press you for the cause. I have listened now, till long past midnight, to the sound of your feet, to the sound of groans and pangs wrung from your bosom; nay, to exclamations and broken sentences which have let me most involuntarily into the knowledge that this disturbance arises from the state of our country. I know your noble nature, and I say to you, in this solemn and sacred hour of danger, follow the guidance of that noble nature.”
I cast my arms about her neck and imprinted upon her lips a kiss as true as ever came from human love. She had taken a weight from my soul. I detailed the whole design to her. She listened with many a change from red to pale, and many a tremor of the white hand that lay in mine. When I ceased, the woman in her broke forth in tears and sighs.