'Go,' he added, 'you have had my word; though we live fifty years you are safe from me, because——because——God forgive you! you are hers.'
He made a gesture towards the door. Sabran shivered under the insult which his conscience could not resent, his hand dared not avenge.
Hearing this there fell away from him the arrogance that had been his mask, the courage that had been his shield. He saw himself for the first time as this man saw him, as all the world would see him if once it knew his secret. For the first time his past offences rose up like ghosts naked from their graves. The calmness, the indifference, the cynicism, the pride which had been so long in his manner and in his nature deserted him. He felt base-born before a noble, a liar before a gentleman, a coward before a man of honour.
Where he stood, leaning on a high caned chair to support himself against the sickly weakness which still came on him from his scarce healed wounds, he felt for the first time to cower and shrink before this man who was his judge, and might become his accuser did he choose. Something in the last words of Egon Vàsàrhely suddenly brought home to him the enormity of his own sin, the immensity of the other's forbearance. He suddenly realised all the offence to honour, all the outrage to pride, all the ineffaceable indignity which he had brought upon a great race: all that he had done, never to be undone by any expiation of his own, in making Wanda von Szalras the mother of his sons. Submissive, he turned without a word of gesture or of pleading, and felt his way out of the chamber through the dusky mists of the faintness stealing on him.
[CHAPTER XX.]
He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.
She was still asleep.
When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever. He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.
But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.