She sat on through the dinner-hour, the change of nurses, motionless and absorbed. Once the patient stirred, sighed, muttered with his lips. Listening to him, breathless herself, she could now hear his breath—so short and light it was that she must have overlooked it all these hours. From this time onwards through the ministrations of the night-nurse, through visits of the Rector, through ominous absence of visits from the Rector’s wife, through the bustling entry of Dr. Goodlake and his voluble explanations—double pneumonia—absence of will-effort—and the like—she was in a fever of hope and anticipation, waiting, like one tense at the starting-post, for the signal.
At midnight Mr. Germain stirred and began to moan, regularly, hopelessly, in a way to break your heart. This, too, her certainty gave her the heart to endure. Such nourishment as he could be given set him wandering. He spoke ramblingly—often of her—cited scripture—“My darling from the lions,” she caught; and “the lion and the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet.” Once he cried aloud, “Ha! Tell Wilbraham I will not see him—” and again, moaning, “No, no, it is untrue—it cannot be true.” There followed a time of broken sleep—at three o’clock, with a grey line of light between the curtains, she saw his open eyes fixed earnestly upon her.
She was on her knees by the bed in a moment. “I am here,” she said. “Do you know me?”
His lips moved, “Yes.”
“I was at home when I heard of your illness—but I did not go home when I left you. I went to the north to consult a friend—about myself. Do you hear me? Can you hear me?”
Again he sighed “Yes.” His eyes were fixed upon hers—with interest, she thought—but without any judgment. The night-nurse discreetly left the room.
She asked his patience, and plunged into her story—her story and his own, with Tristram’s part interwoven. “There was one who used to see me,” was her way of bringing in Duplessis, and after that Tristram was “he” throughout. She would not use his name; felt she could not, and knew that she need not. Full understanding lay behind those unwinking, charged eyes, terribly watchful and indifferent to anything but curiosity. She saw them as the patient eyes of an investigator, expectant of a final experiment. “I have studied this case for three years—now, at last, I am to have it.” He knew everything—had known everything from the beginning: she had no news for him; “how she would put it,” was what he was waiting for—for that only she had drawn him back to life.
This knowledge, this realization drove her to candour past belief. She felt as if she was stripping herself for public exhibition—found herself talking in a dry voice of lovers’ intimacies and of still more secret things—of things which women feel but do not even think. She had to examine herself unflinchingly during this confession, which reduced itself, for lack of matter, to one of motives. In the course of it she had to face a fact never faced before only felt. She could not love Tristram, she did not love Germain—whom, then, did she love? The fine colour flushed her cheeks, the true light flamed in her eyes as she told herself—and then told her husband.
“I know myself now. There is one man who could do with me as he pleased. But he will do nothing with me. I trust him utterly; he has changed me. He has given me a soul, I think. He has taught me the worth of things which I never valued before; and what life is, and happiness, and truth. It is through him that I went home and faced what I was afraid of—left him and all the wonderful things he could make me see. I might never see him again—but I left him. I am doing what he would wish now in telling you all this. Untruth is impossible to him, and must never be possible to me again. That is why I have waited here to tell you. I had to tell you—I had to tell myself. Now I have told you everything——”
She stopped there because she felt that if she were to go on she would have to be insincere. Contrition for what she had done and allowed to be done in the days of her blank ignorance, prayers for forgiveness, promises of amendment—such things, proper for bedside confession—what would they imply, what involve? That she loved this poor watcher? Alas! Pity might have urged her to deceive him so; but she dared not deceive him—and, moreover, she was certain that he could not now be deceived. The light of another world shone upon him, shone through him, and enabled him to read hearts. She did not shrink from this supernatural power of his—if it had been profitable she would have given him her life-blood. It seemed to her as clear as daylight that the utmost she could do for him had now been done—when she had discharged her conscience before him, and cleared her honour. She believed that he would feel himself honoured by that act; and as she stooped over him to kiss him she told him as much.