A sudden determination to make one desperate appeal to his wife dawned in his heart. When first they were married he told himself she was in awe of him, she had not understood him. Now that she knew him better, was there not a chance that she might comprehend the fierce hunger which was in his heart? Surely yes.
Meditatively he walked down the hall.
As he passed along, his eye was attracted by a newspaper lying on the ground, folded tightly together as if it had fallen from some one's coat pocket.
Stooping absently he picked it up, with intent to lay it on the hall-table near. As he did so, his eye fell on a paragraph scored at the side with a pencil-mark. One word in that paragraph struck him like a blow. He started, stared, half laughed like one whom a chance coincidence has disturbed; then, his eyes travelling on, he slowly whitened and stiffened where he stood, his attitude that of a man thunder-struck.
For a couple of minutes or more he remained motionless, then put up an uncertain hand to his eyes as if to clear away a mist.
After another pause, he laid his left hand firmly against the hall-table near which he stood, and, so fortified, read the passage through.
The word which had first caught his eye was Littsdorf, the name of the obscure village of North Germany where his father and his mother lay buried. Glancing higher on the page he saw his father's name printed in full, and his own relationship to him openly proclaimed. So far, true; but the account then became inaccurate, repeating the old story of corruption and suicide which had so long passed current.
As it stood it was not the truth as he had told it to his wife, yet there were certain things in it which surely no one could have known except from his wife's lips.
Violently he repelled the thought, as if to think it were a sin. She! What, she! To whom he had trusted his honor—in whose hands he had laid his life and love—at whose feet he had heaped up the incense of a devotion which was all hers, and had never for a moment leaned towards any other woman!
And yet—yet—Littsdorf!