“Do you mean—?” the woman asked.
“Are you sure it is not wrong to refuse?” he asked almost harshly.
“Oh,” the tortured, cowering woman cried, “how can you—? Right? Wrong? What are right and wrong to me now?” she sobbed. “If I could see my children again, would any scruple of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ make me shrink from anything that was possible?” she asked passionately. “But this is so utterly, utterly impossible.”
He turned and went to her then. “Forgive me,” he begged. “You know it would add an unspeakable horror to death, if I had to leave you here. But I felt I must ask you whether you had fully considered—”
“I have thought of nothing else through all these torturing hours,” she told him gravely.
“How brave you are!” he said in a choked voice. But his eyes were very proud.
“Not brave, not brave,” she moaned. “If I could live, I would—there, I confess it! But I should die of shame and misery, and leave my children—to that man. Or, if I did live, what sort of a mother should I be to them? They would be much better without me! Oh,” she sobbed, “my precious, precious darlings!” She clasped her arms across her breast, and rocked herself in agony.
The moments passed.
The slow sinking sun streaked its red warning through the clerestory slits.
“Lucilla!” He laid his hand on her shoulder.