As her mind formed this idea, she sprang to her feet. Was she losing control of herself? Was her mind weakening or deserting her? How had she so forgotten herself as to have this thought, which was in its nature a wish? She knew that in her proper senses she would choose to die a death of torture rather than that he should have one suspicion of her feeling for him. No, no! She passionately recanted that moment’s impulsive wish as she took her candle, and, more tranquil now, went over and stood by his bed.
It was not swathed in a great cretonne cover, as French beds are apt to be, but was made in the American fashion, with smooth white coverlet and fair linen sheets. Still holding the candle in her hand, she sank on her knees beside this bed, and closed her eyes, and moved her lips in prayer. Her long hair was hanging in a thick mass down her back. The white gown that she wore was almost as plain as a religious habit, and she looked, with her taper burning in front of her, like a nun before a shrine.
She felt a certain power of renunciation come into her, and a strength to do what right and duty demanded. She rose from her knees, and bent over the bed, and for a moment laid her cheek against the cool white pillow. Oh, might God be very good to him, she prayed! Might He make up to him for all the pain and grief and woe that she had caused him; and some time in heaven might he come to know how wholly and completely she had loved him!
She felt a sense of inward calm and strength as she turned from the bed, crossed the room, and entered her own apartment, closing and locking the door behind her.
This peace was on her still as she presently went to bed, and fell almost immediately into a dreamless sleep.
XV
Sonia was awakened early by sounds in the room next her own, and as she opened her eyes with perfect recollection of all that had passed the night before, she wondered if it could possibly be that Harold had returned. It might be only the maid opening and airing the room; but whatever it was, she could not sleep again, and she began to devise a plan for getting away early, so that she might avoid the possibility of meeting Harold. She got out of bed, parted the curtains, and opened the casement of the low French window. The early sunshine had washed everything with its faint golden glow, and the little new-born leaves that covered the trees in the place with a foliage of feathery green, paler than ever in its transparence against the sun, made a delicate filmy screen, through which she looked down on an exquisite moving picture.
The doors of the beautiful, great Madeleine were open wide, and through them was pouring a long white rivulet that seemed to have its source in the little covered doorway in the side of the basement of the great building, and flowed thence in an even stream around the corner, and up the great steps of the building, passing between its central pillars, and so into the interior of the church. This stream was composed of what seemed an unending number of little girls dressed for their first communion. They were all in spotless white, with thin, transparent veils reaching to the hems of their gowns, white wreaths upon their heads, white stockings, shoes, and gloves, and each of them carried a tall white taper, to be presently lighted in the church. Stationed like sentinels along the line were gray-clad, white-bonneted sisters of charity, who directed the children’s movements as they walked with an awed stateliness out of the little door, up to the corner and around it, and then through the gate and up the steps, and were lost to sight beyond the wide church-door.
Sonia could see the very expressions of their faces as they would look up for direction to the sisters as they passed, lifting their meek and timid glances with an air of solemnity which in some instances struggled with a sense of pride in their unwonted paraphernalia. Somehow, the sight of so much ignorance, trust, and innocence, and the thought that each one of them possessed a woman’s heart, with all its capacity for suffering, for hoping, for loving, for regretting, absolutely overcame her. How ignorant they were of what lay before them! How fearlessly their little feet were entering upon the long journey of life, so blind to the pains and bitterness of its way! It seemed heartrendingly cruel to her, to think how they must suffer from the mere fact that each one of them was a woman-child. O God, that women had to suffer so!—that even love, the one delight, should bring in its wake such pain! She could see none of the joy ahead of these sweet children; she thought only of what her own heart suffered now—the regret, the longing, the unfathomable sadness, the blight, the disappointment, the despair! The passionate pain of her heart broke forth in violent sobbing as she stood between the parted curtains, fascinated by the lovely sight, but scarcely able to see it for her tears.
“O God, have pity on them—have pity on them!” she sobbed aloud; and then, while her whole frame shook with her violent weeping, she suddenly became aware of the stealing on of a new influence. What was it? Nothing so definite as sight or sound, but something subtly powerful in its significance to her. It was the pungent odor of a certain kind of cigar which had once made part of the familiar atmosphere of her life. It dominated her now, as if by a spell. She was instantly calmed, and, as if by magic, swept back into the thrilling past. Then, suddenly, penetrating this familiar atmosphere, there came a familiar sound—no articulate utterance, but just a sound in the throat, which seemed somehow meant to challenge attention. She would have known that voice in the most distant and unlikely spot of earth; and now it became quite plain to her that Harold had returned, and was watching the scene opposite from his open window, scarcely a yard away.