He went on, without pausing once, across the great house. So much he could spare his wife, he could save her from her enemy's triumph in her suffering; he could do as men did in the Indian Mutiny, plunge the knife himself into the heart that loved him, and spare her further outrage.
When he reached the door of the library, he stopped and drew a deep breath. He would have gone to his death with calmness and a smile; but here he had no courage. A sickening spasm of pain seemed to suffocate him. He knew that he met only his just punishment. If he could only have suffered alone he would not have rebelled against his doom. But to smite her!——
With greater courage than is needed in the battle-field he turned the handle of the door and entered. She was seated at one of the writing-tables with a mass of correspondence before her, to which she had been vainly striving to give her attention. Her thoughts had been with him and Olga Brancka. She looked up with the light on her face which always came there when she saw him after any absence, long or short. But that light was clouded as she perceived the change in his look in his carriage, in his very features, which were aged, and drawn, and bloodless. She rose with an exclamation of alarm, as he came to her across the length of the noble room, where he had first seen her seated by her own hearth, and heard her welcome him a stranger and unknown beneath her roof.
'Wanda! Wanda!' he said, and his voice seemed strangled, his lips seemed dumb.
'My God, what is it?' she cried faintly. 'Are the children——'
'No, no,'he muttered. 'The children are well. It is worse than death. Wanda, I have come to tell you the sin of my life, the shame of it. Oh! how will you ever believe that I loved you since I wronged you so?'
A great sob broke down his words.
She put her hand to her heart.
'Tell me,' she said, in a low whisper, 'tell me everything. Why not have trusted me? Tell me—I am strong.'
Then he told her the whole history of his past, and spared nothing.