“I am so lonely in this house.”
“Sweetheart.”
“So lonely; it is haunted, I think. I can never sleep, I lie awake ... for hours. Don’t go.”
Her own words shook and shocked her. She was still and supine in his encompassing arm. There was perhaps a relaxation of his moral fineness, a faint disintegration. But of only a moment’s duration, and no man ever held a woman more reverently or more tenderly.
“My wife that will be ... that will be soon. How I adore you.”
Their hands were interlocked, they felt the dear sweetness of each other’s breath; their hearts were beating fast.
Silence then, a long-drawn silence.
“It is not long now. I am counting the days, the hours. You won’t say again I disappoint you, will you? You will bear with me?”
She clung closer to him. Tonight he moved her strangely.
“You really do love me?” she whispered.