Those terrible years on the Congo; the maiming and torturing of human beings; the shedding of blood to acquire wealth. With these sins on his soul could he go down on his knees and pray God to give him the life of the woman he loved?
John Gaunt was no hypocrite and he shuddered. There was not the excuse of ignorance; for as a boy he had gone to church and accepted God, only deliberately to throw Him aside when Christianity would have interfered with his ambition.
“I can’t go whining back to Him now I want something,” he said miserably.
How still everything was! There was something ghostly in the silence of the large library where he sat. Above him his wife lay battling for her life, and he could do nothing to help. Again he thought over what the famous specialist had said and he realized that in all human probability his wife was doomed.
Even now she might be dead. He rose and walked quickly up-stairs. A distant wail from the babe greeted his ears, and his lips were grimly pressed into a straight line.
The son and heir that would cost him his beloved.
Very carefully he turned the handle of his wife’s room and entered. The nurse was standing by the bed and she came to meet him.
“How is she?” he whispered hoarsely.
“No better, I am afraid.”
And he stood beside the bed where his wife lay breathing heavily. Even in that moment of agony he was struck afresh by her great beauty. Never had she been so dear to him, and he would willingly have given all that he possessed in the world to keep her with him.