“‘Servants, be obedient unto your masters!’” she quoted, with a strange smile. ”My words oppress you, possibly, because so many women are speaking through my lips, the women who for generations have thought and suffered and been doomed to silence, to bear the children of men they hated; to have the most sacred thing of life, mother-love, desecrated, according to the temper of their masters; to dread bringing into the world even the children of love, lest, whether white or black, they prove cattle for the slave market!”
“Judithe!”
He caught her hand as though to force silence on her by the strength of his own horror and protest. She closed her eyes for an instant as he touched her, and then drew away to leave a greater space between them, as she said:
“All those women are back of me! I have never lived one hour out of the shadow of their presence. Their cause is my cause, and when I forget them, may God forget me!”
“Your cause!––my wife!” he half whispered, as he dropped her hand, and the blue eyes swept her over with a glance of horror. “Who are you that their cause should be yours?”
“Until this morning I was Madame La Marquise de Caron,” she said, making a half mocking inclination of her head; “in the bill of sale you read today I was named Rhoda Larue, the slave girl who––”
“No!” He caught her fiercely by the shoulder, and his face had a murderous look as he bent above her, “don’t dare to say it! You are mad with the desire to hurt me because I resent your sympathy with the North! But, dear, your madness has made you something more terrible than you 398 realize! Judithe, for God’s sake, never say that word again!”
“For God’s sake, that is, for truth’s sake, I am telling you the thing that is!”
He half staggered to the table, and stood there looking at her; her gaze met his own, and all the tragedy of love and death was in that regard.
“You!” he said, as though it was impossible to believe the thing he heard. “You––of all women! God!––it is too horrible! What right have you to tell me now? I was happy each moment I thought you loved me; even my anger against you was all jealousy! I was willing to forgive even the spy work, shield you, trust you, love you––but––now––”