Rachel lifted her eyes and looked steadily in his. Her tears stopped. The old clairvoyant gaze, which he had not seen on her face for many years, returned.
“No. You will never come back,” she said slowly. Then, as one speaking in a dream, she said still more slowly, and uttering each word with difficulty and emphasis:
“I—do—not—believe—your—wife—is—dead.” Much shocked, and thinking that these words were merely the utterance of an hysterical excitement, Dr. Eben replied:
“Not to me, dear child; she never will be: but you must not let yourself be excited in this way. You will be ill. I must be your doctor again and prescribe for you.”
Rachel continued to watch him, with the same bright and unflinching gaze. He turned from her, and, bringing her a glass of water in which he had put a few drops from a vial, said in his old tone:
“Drink this, Rachel.”
She obeyed in silence; her eyes drooped; the tension of her whole figure relaxed; and, with a long sigh, she exclaimed:
“Oh, forgive me!”
“There is nothing to forgive, my child,” said the doctor, much moved, and, longing to throw his arms around her as she sat there, so gentle, appealing, beautiful, loving. “Why can I not love her?” “What else is there better in life for me to do?” he thought, but his heart refused. Hetty, the lost dead Hetty, stood as much between him and all other women to-day, as she had stood ten years before.
“I must go now, Rachel,” he said. “Good-by.”