‘Churchill,’ she said slowly, with agonized eyes lifted to his face, ‘I know all—all that woman could tell; and she showed me——’
She stopped, shuddering, and clasped her hands before her face. Her husband stood like a rock, and made no attempt to draw nearer to her. He stood aloof and waited.
‘I know all,’ she repeated, with a passionate sob, ‘and I remember what I said when you asked me to be your wife. You were too poor—we were too poor. I could not marry you because of your poverty. It was my worldliness, my mercenary decision that influenced you, that urged you to——Oh, Churchill, half the fault was mine. God give me leave to bear half the burden of His anger.’
She flung herself upon her husband’s shoulder, and sobbed there, clinging to him more fondly than in their happiest hour, her arms clasping him round the neck, her face hidden upon his breast, with such love as only such a woman can feel—love which, supreme in itself, rises above every lesser influence.
‘What! you touch me, Madge! You come to my arms still; you shed compassionate tears upon my breast. Then I am not wholly lost. Vile as I am, there is comfort still. My love, my fond one, fortune gave me nothing so sweet as you.’
‘Oh, Churchill, why, why—?’ she sobbed.
He understood the question involved in that one broken word, hardly audible for the sobs that shook his wife’s frame.
‘Dearest, Fate was hard upon me, and I wanted you!’ he said, with a calmness that chilled her soul. ‘A good man would have trusted in Providence, no doubt, and waited unrepiningly for life’s blessings until he was grey and old, and went down to his grave without ever having known earthly bliss, taking with him some vague notion that he was to come into his estate somewhere else. I am not a good man. My passionate love and my scorn of poverty would not let me wait. I knew that, by one swift bold act—a wicked deed if you will, but not a cruel one, since every man must die once—I could win all I desired. Fortune had made two men’s lots flagitiously unequal. I balanced them.’
‘Oh, Churchill, it is awful to hear you speak like that. Surely you have repented—surely all your life must be poisoned with regret.’
‘Yes, I have felt the canker called remorse. I could surrender all good things that earth can give—yes, let you go from these fond arms, beloved, if that which was done could be undone. And now you will loathe me, and we must part.’