She sank back in her chair with a long breath. He rose, and kneeling beside her, drew her against his breast. She sighed with comfort. "Here! At last to be here. I never thought it would be. It is heaven. Yes; I shall remember that I have been in heaven. But I don't think I shall be sent to hell. No; God won't punish me any more. It will be just sleep."
He had to bend his ear almost to her white lips to catch her whisper. "What did I say? I don't remember exactly; I am so happy. . . . Let me be quiet a little while. I'm pretty tired. May I stay until morning? It is raining, and if I may stay . . . I will go away very early in the morning." The long, rambling, half-whispered story had followed the fierce statement, flung at him when she burst in out of the storm, and stood, sodden with rain, trembling with fatigue and cold, and pushing from her his alarmed and outstretched hands,—the statement that she had left Blair! There were only a few words in the outburst of terrible anger which had been dormant in her for all these years: "He stole your wife. Now he is stealing your money. I told him he couldn't keep them both. Your wife has come back to you. I have left him—"
Even while she was stammering, shrilly, the furious finality, he caught her, swaying, in his arms. It was an hour before she could speak coherently of the happenings of the last twenty-four hours; she had to be warmed and fed and calmed. And it was curious how the lover in him and the physician in him alternated in that hour; he had been instant with the soothing commonplace of help,—her wet clothes, her chilled body, her hunger, were his first concern. "I know you are hungry," he said, cheerfully; but his hands shook as he put food before her. When he drew her chair up to the fire, and kneeling down, took off her wet shoes, he held her slender, tired feet in his hands and chafed them gently; but suddenly laid them against his breast, warming them, murmuring over them with a sobbing breath, as though he felt the weariness of the little feet, plodding, plodding, plodding through the rain to find him. The next minute he was the doctor, ordering her with smiling words to lie back in her chair and rest; then looking at her with a groan.
When at last she was coherent again, she began that pitiful confession, and he listened; at first walking up and down; then coming nearer; sitting beside her; then kneeling; then lifting her and holding her against his breast. When, relaxing in his arms like a tired child, she ended, almost in a whisper, with her timid plea to be allowed to stay until morning, the tears dropped down his face.
"Until morning?" he said, with a laugh that broke into a sob—"until death!"
Long before this his first uneasiness, at the situation—for her sake,—had disappeared. The acquired uneasinesses of convention vanish before the primal realities. The long-banked fire had glowed, then broken into flames that consumed such chaff as "propriety." As he held her in his arms after that whispered and rambling story of despair, he trembled all over. For Elizabeth there had never been a single moment of conventional consciousness; she was solemnly unaware of everything but the fact that they were together for this last moment. When he said "until death," she lifted her head and looked at him.
"Yes," she said, "until death."
Something in her broken whisper touched him like ice. He was suddenly rigid. "Elizabeth, where did you mean to go to-morrow morning?" She made no answer, but he felt that she was alert. "Elizabeth! Tell me! what do you mean?" His loud and terrified command made her quiver; she was bewildered by the unexpectedness of his suspicion, but too dulled and stunned to evade it. David, with his ear close to her lips, raised his head. "Elizabeth, don't you understand? Dear, this is life, not death, for us both."
She drew away from him with a long sigh, struggling up feebly out of his arms and groping for her chair; she shook her head, smiling faintly. "I'm sorry you guessed. No, I can't go on living. There's no use talking about it, David. I can't."
He stood looking down at her, pale from the shock of his discovery. "Listen to me, Elizabeth: you belong to me. Don't you understand, dear? You always have belonged to me. He knew it when he stole you from yourself, as well as from me. You have always been mine. You have come back to me. Do you think I will let Blair Maitland or death or God Almighty, steal you now? Never. You belong to me! to me!"