The question brought into Adah’s eyes a fearful look of anguish, but she did not answer, and the doctor spoke again.
“Have I found Lily only to lose her?”
Still there was no reply, and the doctor continued, “You are my wife, Adah. No power can undo that, save death, and you are my child’s mother. For Willie’s sake, oh Adah, for Willie’s sake, forgive.”
When he appealed to her as his wife, Adah seemed turning into stone; but the mention of Willie, touched the mother, and the iceberg melted at once.
“For Willie, my boy,” she gasped, “I could do almost anything; I could die so willingly, but—but—oh, George, that ever we should come to this. You a deserter, a traitor to your country—lame, disabled, wholly in my power, and begging of me, your outcast wife, for the love which surely is dead—dead. No, George, I do forgive, but never, never more can I be to you a wife.”
There was a rising resentment now in the doctor’s manner, as he answered reproachfully: “Then surrender me at once to the lover hunting for me. Let him take me back where I can be shot, and that will leave you free.”
Adah raised her hand deprecatingly, and when he had finished, rejoined: “You mistake Maj. Stanley, if you think he would marry me, knowing what I should tell him. It’s not for him that I refuse. It’s for myself. I could not bear it. I—”
“Stay, Adah, Lily, don’t say you should hate me;” and the doctor’s voice was so full of anguish that Adah involuntarily advanced toward him, standing quite near, while he begged of her to say if the past could not be forgotten. His family were anxious to receive her. Sweet Anna Millbrook already loved her as a sister, while he, her husband, words could not tell his love for her. He would do whatever she required; go back to the Federal army if she said so; seek for the pardon he was sure to gain; fight for his country like a hero, periling life and limb, if she would only give him the shadow of a hope.
“I must have time to think. I cannot decide alone,” Adah answered, while the doctor clutched her dress, half shrieking with terror,
“You surely will not consult Major Stanley?”