The Princess Sonia

by Julia Magruder

When they returned to the salon, Martha, observing that her friend looked tired, proposed that they should go to bed early—an idea received with evident favor. They were quite safe in the protection of the man-servant, who had been brought with the family from America. Harold had given him orders to sleep for the night in the antechamber, and Martha had one of the maids in the room back of hers. When she asked her guest if she felt at all timid, and saw the smile of amused denial that answered her, she went with her to her room, lingered a few moments to see that all was comfortable about her, then kissed and embraced her friend, and said good night.

Left alone, Sonia stood an instant silent in her place; then, with movements of swift decision, she locked the door by which Martha had gone out, and, crossing the room to another door, softly turned the handle. She had her bedroom candle in her hand, and as the door yielded and opened, she passed into the room beyond it, and stood still once more, as if possessed by that presence from out the past.

The lights in this room had been put out, and all the doors and windows closed. She knew that she was safe in her solitude, and need no longer struggle with the feelings which crowded her heart.

She went to the dressing-table, and took up the old clothes-brush, and put her lips to the dent which she herself had made there once, by using the brush as a hammer. Then silently dashing away the heavy tears that rolled from her eyes, she looked closely at the grotesque figures of women and fish, and recalled such amusing things which had been said about them that she began to laugh, even while more tears were gathering, and straining her throat with pain. The nervous little laugh died away as she pressed the brush again to her lips. Then she lifted, one by one, all the familiar objects that lay before her, and looked at them, while her tears fell like rain.

Presently she took up the portfolio from the table near by, and turned over the thick sheets of blotting-paper within. She could see plainly the inverted and almost illegible, but characteristic, impression of a woman’s writing. In some places this was lost in very different characters, but in others it was distinctly recognizable. She walked to the dressing-table with it, and held it before the mirror, and read distinctly in one place the words, “Yours always, Sophie,” and in another, “Yours faithfully, Sophia Keene.” Her heart trembled. She had no idea to whom she had so signed herself, but she wondered passionately if Harold had ever tried this experiment, and seen those signatures from the faithless woman who had been his wife.

Suddenly she put the book back on the table, and fell on her knees before it, laying her face upon its pages, and sobbing upon them until they were saturated with her tears; for, underneath her own handwriting, she had seen, reflected in the glass, writing which seemed almost as familiar, in which she had deciphered the words, “Your loving husband.”

She had destroyed every word of that handwriting which she had ever possessed, and thousands of times her heart had hungered to see it in these very words. It was upon this spot that her lips were laid now, while they whispered out, in inarticulate sobs and gasps, words of heartbroken pain.

She had told him that she did not love him, and had demanded a divorce from him. She must never contradict those words, or try to undo that act. She knew that she was weak, but she knew that she had courage enough to stand to this resolution. He should never know how, slowly at first, and afterward with increasing force and swiftness, the knowledge of her mistake had come to her. For a while she had fought it off with furious denial. She had argued and talked with herself, and recalled past feelings of resentment, anger, and desperate antagonism, to prove to herself that she had been right in vowing that she did not love him; but in the end nothing had availed. Long before their paths had met again she had known that she was wrong; that she had made a hideous mistake of her life; and that, with all the force, fire, energy, and passion of her heart, she loved the man whom she had repudiated. But, even with this knowledge, she might have borne it, she might have lived and died without making a sign, if only she had not seen him again!

Now, however, that she had seen him, heard him, felt the atmosphere of his presence about her, felt his thoughts of her surrounding her, and felt through all her pulses his touch upon her hand, what was she to do? How was she to stumble on, and pretend to fight, when a mere look from his eyes made her sword-arm nerveless?

Oh, she must give way this once, she felt, and shed a few of those millions of pent-up tears! Now that she was here in the very room that he had slept in yesterday, and would come back to to-morrow, she must let the spirit of love and grief within her have its way. Perhaps some remnant of it might linger after she was gone, and speak to his heart from hers.