He shook and trembled. If he wanted her! He wanted nothing but her: she was the world to him.
"If I want you!"
He clutched her hands and kissed them. She felt the hot tears run on them. He wept for her, the poor man wept. She dragged herself close to the bed and tried to speak, tried to tell him that she was so altered. She spoke as if he had nothing to do with it: as if she had been smitten by some strange accident, by some disease, by some malignant and most unhappy fate. He heard her whisper.
"I'm, I'm not pretty now," she sobbed dryly. "Ned, I'm not toketie any more!"
For once, perhaps, he suffered more than she did: for that time he exceeded her grief, because this was his deed. He groaned.
"But if you want me!"
"I want you, Mary," he screamed suddenly, "no one else, dear Mary: oh, what a wretch I am!"
The best of him, long hidden, long concealed, in a drought of tears, came up at last. He hid his head in the pillow and cried like a child. She sat upon the bed in an urgent desire of maternal help and held his head between her hands.
"Poor Ned!"
She took him at last in her arms and murmured to him gently.