"Yes, but——" She checked herself, and then added: "Women are delicate."
"Oh! so you are going to be a grand lady, and be delicate, are you? Who ever heard of a Montenegrin being delicate?" Then he added: "If you don't feel well, go to bed and try to sleep."
Thereupon he turned on the other side, and began to snore very soon afterwards.
Milena began to think of what had been and might have been.
She had sinned, foolishly, thoughtlessly; but since that fatal night she had never known a single moment's happiness. As time passed, the heinousness of her sin rose up before her, more dreadful, more appalling.
Still, was it the sin itself, or its dire consequences, that rendered her so moody, so timorous?
She never asked herself such a question; she only knew that she now started, like a guilty thing, at the slightest noise, and she shivered if anybody spoke to her abruptly. At times she fancied everybody could read her guilt in her face.
She had been more than once tempted, of late, to tell her husband that, in some months, she would be a mother. Still, the words had ever stuck in her throat; she could never nerve herself enough to speak.
Though he might probably never have got to know the real truth, could she tell him that he was the father of her child, or, at least, allow him to think so? No, she could never do that, for it was impossible to act that lie the whole of her life. Could she see her husband, returning from a long voyage, take in his arms and fondle the child that was not his, the child that he would strangle if he knew whose it was?
Although an infant is the real, nay, the only bond of married life, still, the child of sin is a spectre ever rising 'twixt husband and wife, estranging them from one another for ever.