The man looked up in surprise, smiled:
"Very well, ma'am, as you please."
And, as she went up the stairs, she tried to hold herself more erect; she felt younger....
CHAPTER XXVII
And in her room she hardly slept for nervousness about the great event that was to happen on the morrow. All the night through, while the wind moaned against the panes, she lay in bed, with unclosed eyes, listening whether she could not hear in the voices of the wind yet other voices, strange voices, voices warning or commanding the living.
She had never spoken to her husband about the voices, though he was well aware that she read the strange book and disapproved of her reading it, because it could not be fit and proper reading for people who, from their childhood, had believed that the best of all books was the Bible and the best of all beliefs the belief in the Lord, from Whom every sorrow came and every blessing. And she had hidden the strange book also from the old minister, who came to see them every week, since they both, growing older each year and ailing, had ceased to go to church: she put the strange book out of the way when he was expected on a Sunday-afternoon; but she studied it without concealment from her old husband and yet in silence, as though guilty of a secret heresy. He had asked her once:
"What are you reading there?"
And she told him the strange title and said that she wanted to enquire into things, but nothing further had been uttered between the two old people, though she heard him silently express his disapproval. But, since the day when, years ago, she had yielded to her husband and consented to the superhuman sacrifice of surrendering her son to the woman whom that son had plunged into unhappiness—because this sacrifice was the duty which was required of her by divine and human equity—since that time she had had no peace, read as she might in her Bible, talk as she would with the minister, pray as she did for hours on end. She had had no peace: deep down in herself she had always borne a grudge because Heaven had laid so heavy a sacrifice upon her, the mother. Her husband had had the strength of a man who pursues the straight path, the path of duty, and he had surrendered his son and lost him without a superfluous word. But she, though she also spoke no word, had not resigned herself; and her soul had rebelled; and she had thought that she was lost for all eternity ... until a gentle ray had come, by accident, to comfort her out of the strange book which, by accident, she had taken up and opened. And, still a believer, though she no longer went to church and though, in her heart, she did not agree with the minister, did not agree with her old husband, she nevertheless endeavoured to unite, to reconcile, to blend what remained of the old faith, which had once stood firm as a rock, with the new faith; and, when she prayed, she prayed indeed to the same God of her old, former faith, but she listened also to the voices, to that part of the invisible world which hovers around us and saves us and guides us and warns and protects us and sets its soft-smiling compassion between us and the rigid immutability of the divine grace or displeasure, tempering the divine brow into a softer glance. That was her secret; and what she silently told her husband of the new faith still remained an unpenetrated secret to him in the dumb evenings when they sat together and read and he heard her, in silence, say that she believed differently from what she once did because she had found no peace in that divine immutability.
And now the day came which was Henri's birthday. She dressed very early, with difficulty and with shaking hands, and, when Piet told her that there was a train at nine o'clock, she blushed and remained quietly waiting for the carriage to be got ready and for Piet to come and tell her. She was her ordinary self at breakfast, but tried, without attracting attention, not to eat, because the bread stuck in her throat; and, when, at the breakfast-table, her husband asked if she had not telegraphed to Henri, she answered: