"Very well, speak, then," she said, cowering together, as if resigning herself to her fate. "Tell me what you like."
But when he saw the terror with which she contemplated hearing his story, the words froze on his lips, and he felt as if he could never impart to her the painful and sacred impressions that were so fresh in his memory. He had expected that she would have drunk in all with passionate eagerness, and would have questioned him about every minute that he had passed by Paul's deathbed, till she was in complete possession of the whole scene. Instead, she shrank from it, in a vulgar fear of her nerves being upset.
Unmotherly, almost inhuman, did her conduct appear. Now, he felt that to speak of the child's quiet, pathetic death to the mother, would be profanation. Though there had been no tie of blood between them, he had belonged to him in life and in death. This woman from whose womb he had sprung, this smiling, frightened woman, who only thought of her own discomfort, and wished to be pitied for herself, had become a stranger--a stranger to her child, and a stranger to him. He saw, with horror, the gulf that she set between him and her, which no seductive charm, no flattering little speeches, could ever bridge again.
"Perhaps you are right, Felicitas," he said coldly. "We will leave it for the present; it may be too sad a subject and too exciting for you."
"Ah, how good you are!" she whispered gratefully; "you can feel for your poor, heart-broken wife."
And as she had often done when she wanted to bewitch him with a cheap endearment, she stretched over to him and pillowed her head against his arm, looking into his face with ecstatically uplifted eyes.
He submitted passively, and glanced down in cold astonishment on the pale, pretty features on which an almost coquettish smile was now playing. In a flash he seemed to see through the thousand machinations with which, for years, she had chained him to her chariot-wheel: the allurements with which she had awakened desires within him without any intention of satisfying them, and the extravagant caprices, obeying which had weakened his will and degraded his intellect. The whole tissue, woven of laughing selfishness and self-seeking affability and mock naïveté, now fell away, showing the being he had humbly worshipped in her naked unreality and insincerity.
He could not guess that all she said and did at the moment was a kind of veiled apology, for in her mania to excuse her past faults she had revealed herself to him in her true colours. He saw all that was hollow and vain and false in her, without understanding why she prevaricated and lied. They sat on together for another hour. The table was cleared, but the spirit-lamp still hummed. The antique Dutch clock in the corner kept up its solemn and deliberate tick. Now and then a shower of snow-flakes whirled against the window and the sashes rattled gently. A profound, dreamful peace seemed to have descended on the apartment, a peace well ordained to bring healing to two wounded hearts.
Felicitas, all unsuspecting, yet inwardly anxious, continued to make herself charming and amiable. She spoke of the sympathy shown her by friends and neighbours, the countless letters of condolence which she had received, the many callers she had refused to see. She even made plans for the future, and promised all sorts of wonderful things to comfort and distract him. He listened with grave courteous attention; and in every word he found confirmation of his new reading of her character. His eyes wandered round the room. He saw the lights and shadows dancing on the walls; the dear old objects amidst which he had been brought up, which he would have bequeathed to his step-son; so soon as he could have legally adopted him. He listened to the ticking of the clock and all the familiar sounds which in peaceful evening hours are the music of happy homes.
But now everything seemed different, everything was strange, unreal, almost disquieting.