He shuffled out. That night her lonely hell was made lonelier by the opening of a peep-hole into Paradise—a paradise of Adam and Eve and forbidden fruit. For days she preserved a stony silence toward the sympathy of the inmates. Of what avail words against the flames of jealousy in which she writhed?
He lingered about the passage on the next visiting day, vaguely remorseful, but she would not see him. So he went away, vaguely indignant, and his new housemate comforted him, and he came no more.
When you lie on your back all day and all night you have time to think, especially if you do not sleep. A situation presents itself in many lights from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. One such light flashed on the paradise, and showed it to her as but the portico of purgatory. Her husband would be damned in the next world, even as she was in this. His soul would be cut off from among its people.
On this thought she brooded till it loomed horribly in her darkness. And at last she dictated a letter to the matron, asking Herzel to come and see her.
He obeyed, and stood shame-faced at her side, fidgeting with his peaked cap. Her hard face softened momentarily at the sight of him, her bosom heaved, suppressed sobs swelled her throat.
"Thou hast sent for me?" he murmured.
"Yes—perhaps thou didst again imagine I was on my death-bed!" she replied, with bitter irony.
"It is not so, Sarah. I would have come of myself—only thou wouldst not see my face."
"I have seen it for twenty years—it is another's turn now."
He was silent.