Then, after a little, when they tell him he has crept slowly—slowly, but surely—out of the shadows—and that life (not the old life, but one twin with suffering perchance) yet lies before him, he feels that he will regain health and strength sooner if the burden of a secret is removed from him.
It is very hard to face Zai as he makes a clean breast of it, but he does it.
“My pet,” he murmurs, in a low weak voice which is very unlike his old accents, and the sound of which goes right to her heart, “I have something to say to you.”
So she kneels down beside him. It is the place she likes best now in the world.
“Do you love me very much, Zai?” he asks her, while his thin white hand rests on her shining chesnut hair, and, looking up, she sees that there is an actual mist of tears in his handsome ultramarine eyes.
“Ah, don’t I?” she whispers, catching hold of his hand and kissing it passionately, and he reads plainly enough the love that is patent on her face.
“But would you love me so much, Zai, if you knew that I had been unfaithful—that I had forgotten you just for a little while?” he asks, his lips quivering and his heart beating very fast. For somehow he holds on to her love with a strange tenacity. It seems, in truth, to be the only—only—thing worth living for.
She does not answer for a moment, but she has his hand still clasped close in her own, while her face grows deathly white, and there is a startled, stricken look in her grey eyes that cuts him to the heart.
“It is quite true, Zai. For a little while I did forget you. Another woman’s face came between us, and for the life of me I couldn’t shake off its power over me, though I tried. Upon my soul I tried!”
He pauses, breathless, and a pallor creeps over his face—a face as handsome as Apollo’s, in spite of suffering.