“No, no, don’t come with me,” whispered Guest as he sprang toward Stratton’s room, but Edie paid no heed to his words, and was close behind him as he passed through first one and then the other door, drawing back, though, the next moment to close them both.
A few minutes before when Myra had performed the same action she had stood gazing before her at the figure seated at the table; and the attitude of dejection, the abject misery and despair it conveyed to her mind, swept away all compunction. Every thought of her visit being unmaidenly, and opposed to her duty toward herself and those who loved her, was forgotten. Her hands were involuntarily raised toward him, and she stood there with her lips apart, her head thrown back, and her eyes half-closed and swimming with tenderness as her very being seemed to breathe out the one word—“Come!”
But Stratton might have been dead for all the change that took place by that dimly lit table. He did not stir; and at last, seeing that he must be suffering terribly, and, taking the thought closely to her breast that it was for her sake, she moved forward slowly, almost gliding to the back of his chair, to stand there looking down yearningly upon him till her bosom heaved with a long, deep sigh, and raising her hands toward him once more she laid them tenderly upon his head.
“Malcolm!”
The effect of that touch was electric. With one bound Stratton leapt from his chair toward the fireplace, and there stood at bay, as it were, before the door of the closet, gazing at her wildly for a few moments, as if at some unreal thing. Then his hands went to his brow, and the intensity of his gaze increased till, as she took one step toward him with extended arms, the wild look in his haggard face changed to one of intense joy.
“Myra!” he cried, and the next moment he had clasped her in his arms.
For the moment it was a different man from the wretched being who had crept back to his rooms heartsick and despairing, while, after shrinking from him with the reserve begotten of the doubt and misery which had been her portion for so long past, the warm clasp of his arms, the tender, passionate words he uttered, and the loving caresses of his hands as he drew her face closer and closer to his swept away all memories of his lapse, and of the world and its ways. He had held her to his throbbing breast—he, the man to whom her heart had first expanded two years before—and she knew no more, thought no more of anything but the supreme joy that he loved her dearly still.
Brief pleasure. She saw his eyes gazing passionately into hers, full of the newly found delight, and then they contracted, his brow grew rugged, and, with a hoarse sigh, he shrank from her embrace, looked wildly round, and then, with a shudder, whispered:
“You here—here! Here? It is you?—it is no dream; but why—why have you come? It is too horrible.”
“Malcolm!” she cried piteously.