“Oh, please do not speak of it,” she said; “it is so bad even in thought.”
“But will you never forgive me, and care for me? We have to live our lives together.”
“Pray let us not speak of it now,” she said, in a weary voice; then, breathlessly: “It is of much more consequence that you should love me—and the child.”
He drew himself up with a choking sigh, and spread out his arms to her. “Oh, my wife!” he exclaimed.
“No, no,” she cried, “this is unreasonable; we know so little of each other.... Good-night, again.”
He turned at the door, came back, and, stooping, kissed the child on the lips. Then he said: “You are right. I deserve to suffer.... Good-night.”
But when he was gone she dropped on her knees, and kissed the child many times on the lips also.
CHAPTER IX. THE FAITH OF COMRADES
When Francis Armour left his wife’s room he did not go to his own, but quietly descended the stairs, went to the library, and sat down. The loneliest thing in the world is to be tete-a-tete with one’s conscience. A man may have a bad hour with an enemy, a sad hour with a friend, a peaceful hour with himself, but when the little dwarf, conscience, perches upon every hillock of remembrance and makes slow signs—those strange symbols of the language of the soul—to him, no slave upon the tread-mill suffers more.