Julie softly opened it, and closed it behind her. Delafield had heard her approach, and was standing by the table, supporting himself upon it. His aspect filled Julie with horror. She ran to him and threw her arms round him. He sank back into his chair, and she found herself kneeling beside him, murmuring to him, while his head rested upon her shoulder.
"Jacob, I am here! Oh, I ought to have been here all through! It's terrible--terrible! But, Jacob, you won't suffer so--now I'm here--now we're together--now I love you, Jacob?"
Her voice broke in tears. She put back the hair from his brow, kissing him with a tenderness in which there was a yearning and lovely humility. Then she drew a little away, waiting for him to speak, in an agony.
But for a time he seemed unable to speak. He feebly released himself, as though he could not bear the emotion she offered him, and his eyes closed.
"Jacob, come and lie down!" she said, in terror. "Let me call the doctors."
He shook his head, and a faint pressure from his hand bade her sit beside him.
"I shall be better soon. Give me time. I'll tell you--"
Then silence again. She sat holding his hand, her eyes fixed upon him. Time passed, she knew not how. Susan came into the room--a small sitting-room in the east wing--to tell her that the neighboring bedroom had been prepared for herself. Julie only looked up for an instant with a dumb sign of refusal. A doctor came in, and Delafield made a painful effort to take the few spoonfuls of food and stimulant pressed upon him. Then he buried his face in the side of the arm-chair.
"Please let us be alone," he said, with a touch of his old peremptoriness, and both Susan and the doctor obeyed.
But it was long before he could collect energy enough to talk. When he did, he made an effort to tell her the story of the boy's death, and the father's self-destruction. He told it leaning forward in his chair, his eyes on the ground, his hands loosely joined, his voice broken and labored. Julie listened, gathering from his report an impression of horror, tragic and irremediable, similar to that which had shaken the balance of his own mind. And when he suddenly looked up with the words, "And now I am expected to take their place--to profit by their deaths! What rightful law of God or man binds me to accept a life and a responsibility that I loathe?" Julie drew back as though he had struck her. His face, his tone were not his own--there was a violence, a threat in them, addressed, as it were, specially to her. "If it were not for you," his eyes seemed to say, "I could refuse this thing, which will destroy me, soul and body."