He wondered what she meant, and they sat on in the still darkening room. She moved again.
“Will you presently take my cloak—and new grey cloak from behind the door—and go out with it. You will find a little grave at the foot of the tall gum-tree; the water drips off the long, pointed leaves; you must cover it up with that.”
She moved restlessly as though in pain.
Gregory assented, and there was silence again. It was the first time she had ever spoken of her child.
“It was so small,” she said; “it lived such a little while—only three hours. They laid it close by me, but I never saw it; I could feel it by me.” She waited; “its feet were so cold; I took them in my hand to make them warm, and my hand closed right over them they were so little.” There was an uneven trembling in the voice. “It crept close to me; it wanted to drink, it wanted to be warm.” She hardened herself—“I did not love it; its father was not my prince; I did not care for it; but it was so little.” She moved her hand. “They might have kissed it, one of them, before they put it in. It never did any one any harm in all its little life. They might have kissed it, one of them.”
Gregory felt that some one was sobbing in the room.
Late on in the evening, when the shutter was closed and the lamp lighted, and the rain-drops beat on the roof, he took the cloak from behind the door and went away with it. On his way back he called at the village post-office and brought back a letter. In the hall he stood reading the address. How could he fail to know whose hand had written it? Had he not long ago studied those characters on the torn fragments of paper in the old parlour? A burning pain was at Gregory’s heart. If now, now at the last, one should come, should step in between! He carried the letter into the bedroom and gave it to her. “Bring me the lamp nearer,” she said. When she had read it she asked for her desk.
Then Gregory sat down in the lamp-light on the other side of the curtain, and heard the pencil move on the paper. When he looked round the curtain she was lying on the pillow musing. The open letter lay at her side; she glanced at it with soft eyes. The man with the languid eyelids must have been strangely moved before his hand set down those words:
“Let me come back to you! My darling, let me put my hand round you, and guard you from all the world. As my wife they shall never touch you. I have learnt to love you more wisely, more tenderly, than of old; you shall have perfect freedom. Lyndall, grand little woman, for your own sake be my wife!
“Why did you send that money back to me? You are cruel to me; it is not rightly done.”