“I am; he insists on my staying with him,” replied George, almost apologetically.
“Then,” she returned, “you must have some supper. We will go down, and send up Dawtie.”
He followed her to the kitchen. Dawtie was not there, but her mistress found her.
When she entered her master's room, he lay motionless, “and white with the whiteness of what is dead.”
She got brandy, and made him swallow some. As soon as he recovered a little, he began to talk wildly.
“Oh, Agnes!” he cried, “do not leave me. I'm not a bad man! I'm not what Dawtie calls me. I believe in the atonement; I put no trust in myself; my righteousness is as filthy rags. Take me with you. I will go with you. There! Slip that under your white robe—washed in the blood of the Lamb. That will hide it—with the rest of my sins! The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife. Take it; take it; I should be lost in heaven without it! I can't see what I've got on, but it must be the robe of His righteousness, for I have none of my own! What should I be without it! It's all I've got! I couldn't bring away a single thing besides—and it's so cold to have but one thing on—I mean one thing in your hands! Do you say they will make me sell it? That would be worse than coming without it!”
He was talking to his wife!—persuading her to smuggle the cup into heaven! Dawtie went on her knees behind the curtain, and began to pray for him all she could. But something seemed stopping her, and making her prayer come only from her lips.
“Ah,” said the voice of her master, “I thought so! How could I go up, and you praying against me like that! Cup or no cup, the thing was impossible!”
Dawtie opened her eyes—and there he was, holding back the curtain and looking round the edge of it with a face of eagerness, effort, and hate, as of one struggling to go, and unable to break away.
She rose to her feet.