On the roof of the bay-window, the soft, large drops of the April shower were beginning to fall in musical whispers.
Jessie put out a hand upon the marble top of the table to steady herself, as she resumed. There was that in this continued silence that awed and made her incoherent. It was unlike Roy's usual reception of her advances—his ready and indulgent courtesy. Her heart beat painfully and fast, but she did not swerve from her resolution.
"I know you so well—your purity of purpose; the standard of excellence you set for your motive and deed; your earnest desire to make me happy—that I fear you will, when I am gone, accuse yourself of want of skill or judgment in your treatment of me. I want you to remember then, that I broke through the reserve we have aided one another to maintain, to assure you that, in no one particular would I have had your action different from what it has been—that, in language and demeanor you have been alike noble. Deserving your reprobation, I have received tender respect; having forfeited by my fickleness and falsehood all claim to kindness, I have been cherished as the truest wife in the land might hope to be. Something tells me that, when we part to-morrow, it will be to meet no more in time. It may be that the presentiment is born of my distempered imagination; but it has drawn my whole soul out in a longing I cannot frame into speech, to be at peace with you; to feel your hand again upon my head; to hear you call me once—just once more, by the holy name of Wife!
"For I am your wife, Roy! Unworthy as I am of the title, it is the only glory I have. Until yesterday, I had dreamed of saying this to you in very different language and circumstances. It is just that this expectation should be disappointed. I do not appeal from my sentence of exile. But, by the memory of the love you once had for me—and I was full of faults then as now—do not send me away, unforgiven, and starving for your affection—my husband!"
When he looked up, she was kneeling at his side, her eyes streaming with the tears that had impeded her utterance.
Still dumbly, he drew her to him; put back the hair from her face, every line of his own astir with a passion of pity and adoration she hardly dared to look upon. It was a minute before he could articulate. Then the tense lips were moved into womanly softness.
"You can forgive me, then, my Wife! Thank God!"
He laid his cheek to hers, and she felt the great sobs of the breast against which she leaned.
But for a long time, there was nothing more said.
Except by the rain-drops whispering over their heads, broken, now and then, by the wind into little gushes that sounded like laughter, happy to tearfulness.