How long he knelt there, Mr. Chantrey did not know. He felt cramped and stiff, for he did not stir from his first position; and he had uttered no other word of prayer. But at last Sophy moved and turned her head; and he lifted up his face at the sound. The moon was shining full into the room, and they could see one another, but not distinctly, as in daylight. She looked at him in dreamy silence for a few moments, and then she timidly stretched out her hand, and whispered, "David!"
"My wife!" he answered, laying his own cold hand upon hers.
For some few minutes neither of them spoke again. They gazed at one another as though some great gulf had opened between them, and neither of them could cross it. In the dim light they could only see the pallid, outline of each other's face, as though they had met in some strange, sad world. But presently he leaned over her, and kissed her.
"Oh!" she cried, with a sudden loudness that rang through the quiet room, "you know all! You know how wicked I am. But you don't know how lonely and wretched I have been. I tried to break myself of it I did try to keep from it; but it was always there on the table when I sat down to my meals with Aunt Bolton; and I could always find comfort in it. Oh! help me! Don't cast me off; don't hate me. Help me."
"I will help you," he answered, earnestly; but he could say no more. The mere sound of the words she spoke unnerved him.
"And I have made you miserable just as you are coming home!" she went on. "I never meant to do that. But I was so restless, looking forward to to-morrow; and aunt's maid advised me to take a little, for fear I should be quite ill when you came. I should have been all right to-morrow; and I was so resolved never to touch it again, after you had come home. You are come back quite strong, are you? There is no more fear for you? Oh! I will conquer myself; I must conquer myself. If it had not always been in my sight, and the doctors had not ordered it, I should never have been so wicked. Do you forgive me? Do you think God will forgive me?"
"Can you give it up?" he asked.
"Oh! I must, I will give it up," she sobbed; "but if I do, and if you forgive me, it can never be the same again. You will not think the same of me—and people have seen me—they all talk about it—and I shall always be ashamed before them. I am a disgrace to you; Aunt Bolton has said so again and again. Then there's Charlie; I'm not fit to be his mother. That is quite true. However long I live, people in Upton will remember it, and gossip about, it. If they had let me die it would have been better for us all. You could have loved me then."
"But I love you still," he answered, in a voice of tenderness and pity; "you are very dear to me. How can I ever cease to love you?"
Yet as he spoke a terrible thought flashed through his mind that his wife might some day become to him an object of unutterable disgust. An image of a besotted, drunken woman always in his house, and bearing his name, stood out for a moment sharply and distinctly before his imagination. He shuddered, and paused; but almost before she could notice it, he went on in low and solemn tones.