He read on and on, until he had finished Genesis, his wife meanwhile making no comment, but listening with a flushed and eager interest.
He paused when he reached Exodus, but a gesture from her urged him on. At last she took the book from him. "You are getting hoarse, I will read to you."
It seemed to Justin that he would never grow weary. The exquisite glow of happiness that pervaded him would keep him awake till all hours of the night, yet after a time he felt himself flagging; and, seeing that she was unwilling to go to bed, he slipped to the sofa for a brief nap.
After what seemed to him a few minutes, he opened his eyes. But the night was over. Daylight was creeping into the room; and there at the table still sat Derrice, her head dropped on her arms, the book pushed from her, and the gas burning in a sickly glare above.
He sprang up and shook from him the rug she had carefully tucked about him. She was asleep, and her hands were cold. The fire had long ago died out, and the room was chilly. She had not been able to tear herself from the book, whose pages were full of such entrancing novelty. It was open at the account of the crucifixion. The thin leaves were blistered and her cheeks were tear-stained. Stumbling over the law and the prophets, she had probably turned to the New Testament for clearer reading. Perhaps, too, she wished to see for herself whether the prophesied One had really come, and what was the manner of his coming.
His own eyes grew moist. He softly dropped the rug over her shoulders, and set himself to the task of rebuilding the fire. Intense gratitude and thankfulness and such a flood of tender emotion overspread him that he could scarcely control himself. When a blaze sprang up from the wood, he rose and hurriedly paced the room. His ardent looks, like rays from burning glass, played over the head of the sleeping girl, and at last she stirred with an uneasy mention of his own name.
He was at her side in an instant, soothing her and kissing the heavy, swollen eyelids, but she seemed only partly aware of his presence, and writhed in his arms as if in bodily pain.
"Oh, it was so horrible, here alone in the night! Why did they kill Him? He was so holy!"
Justin gave her only the mute consolation of his presence. What words of his could soften the old, old tragedy of the cross,—so familiar a story to him, so startling and awful an occurrence to her? Alone in the midnight hours she had read the account of eye-witnesses, and their words had entered like iron into her sensitive soul.
"I heard something of it in a church once," she said, with closed eyes, "but I did not dream it was like that. Oh, how wicked they were! I would have fought for Him had I been there."