He had wondered if he could keep his hands from her fair throat,—she came and he could hardly restrain himself from falling at her feet. When he looked at her at last his heart rebelled. He had believed that her perfidy had ended his infatuation. He found in her loveliness the power yet to wound—he suffered, he loved. It was not only the woman he could not give up, but the half, the happier half, of his own self.
Seeing him so weary Sheila felt a sudden movement of pity, a maternal tenderness she had not believed possible. Across the shining little table, which she contemplated from time to time with an affectionate eye, she saw always the intruding shadow of the lawyer, malignant and inexorable, bringing with it the damp and the chill of the outer night. It was a memory and a threat, the shadow of the cold, starved world of poverty which clung to her. Before this real menace her vanities and her whims vanished, and suddenly, on again looking at the man who had placed her amid this coziness and warmth, the tears dimmed her eyes. All at once she realized how desperately she clung to this home of hers, this one satisfying reality in a stretch of past darkness and future menace. Threatened in this joy of possession her heart was softened towards her husband, whose suffering she now comprehended with her own. She raised her head and said compassionately:
"How tired you are, dear! You aren't ill, are you?"
At this, her first caress, he twitched violently as from a shock of pain, and drawing his hand hastily across his forehead he stammered inaudibly:
"No, no."
He fastened his gaze desperately on his plate; to look at her would have meant surrender. He had an immense impulse to seize her in his arms, to overwhelm the fair, treacherous face with kisses, to forego and to forget and to sink into a shameless, passionate subjection. To himself he repeated again and again:
"Yes, yes, I love her—I want to love her!"
Sheila also was stirred by the responsive emotion one endearing word had brought.
"If he loves me like that," she thought, trembling on the verge of a confession, "he might forgive me anything."
And shaken with the daring of the thought she sought the courage to throw herself on her knees and cry his mercy.