"What I allude to will make me free as air—free as I was before I met you—free to bring another mistress to Richmond House before your very eyes. Money will procure it, and of that I have enough. I allude to a divorce—do you know what that means?"
Yes, she knew. Her arms dropped by her side as if she had been suddenly stricken with death, the light died out in her eyes, the words she would have uttered were frozen on her lips, and, as if the last blow she could ever receive had fallen, she laid her hand on her heart and lifted her eyes, calm as his now, to his face.
Some author has said, "Great shocks kill weak minds, and stir strong ones with a calm resembling death." So it was now with Georgia; she had been stunned into calm—the calm of undying, life-long despair. She had believed and trusted all along—she had thought he loved her until now—and now!
What was there in her face that awed even him? It was not anger, nor reproach, nor yet sorrow. A thrill of nameless terror shot through his heart, and with the last cruel words all anger passed away. He advanced a step toward her, as if to speak again, but she raised her hand, and lifting her eyes to his face with a look he never forgot, she turned and passed from the room.
And Richard Wildair was alone. He had not meant one-half of what he had said in the white heat of his passion, and the idea of a divorce had no more entered his head than that of slaying himself on the spot had. He had said it in his rage, none the less deep for being suppressed, and now he would have given uncounted worlds that those fatal words had never been uttered.
He went out to the hall, but she had gone—he caught the last flutter of her dress as she passed the head of the stairs toward her own room.
"I ought not to have said that," he said uneasily to himself as he paced up and down. "I am sorry for it now. To-morrow I will see her again, and then—well, 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' I cannot live this life longer. I will not stay in Burnfield. I cannot stay. I shall go abroad and take her with me. Yes, that is what I will do. Travel will work wonders in Georgia, and who knows what happiness may be in store for us yet."
He walked to the window and looked out. The white snow lay in great drifts on every side, looking cold and white and death-like in the pale luster of a wintry moon. With a shudder he turned away, and threw himself moodily on a couch in the warm parlor, saying, as if to reassure himself:
"Yes, to-morrow I will see her, and all shall be well—to-morrow—to-morrow."
There was a paper lying on the table, and he took it up and looked lightly over it. The first thing that struck his eyes was a poem, headed: