He sighed.
“It isn’t as it used to be—how can it be? I think something has died in me. But, dear—I know that if I did not love you, I couldn’t pity you. I couldn’t be sorry for you. I’m sure of that—I could only hate you.”
“Thank God!” he said, breathing deeply. It was like the lifting of a great weight from his chest; but as he straightened himself, the spectre of his wife’s awakening in the darkened room suddenly started up before him.
“Promise me,” he said with an eager ring in his voice, “whatever comes, you won’t shut me quite away from you! Promise you’ll let me share your suffering! Promise me—”
She shuddered, and her eyes contracted.
“I promise,” she whispered.
“Thank you, Sweet, that is sacred,” he said.
He drew her again towards him, and would have kissed her lips; but she bent her forehead to him instead, and he kissed it reverently.
The wind was rising steadily, it swept through the trees, and whistled mournfully in the hollows of the ruined tower.
Jocelyn was shivering in her light blouse.