It seemed to him at the supreme moment that a burning ray of Divine Light penetrated and illumined him. He saw himself clearly as he had never seen himself before. He understood how he had fallen from his old ideals, and strayed from the way of cleanliness and honor. He realized that Sympathy had been the missing link between himself and his fellow-men. He had loved one man. He had worshiped one woman with an overwhelming, guilty passion. Both friend and mistress had deceived him; and for this reason he had reared a wall of icy doubt between himself and the rest of Humanity.
You might have smiled, could you have seen him at this juncture trying to love his silent jailers, guessing at their hidden lives, wondering about their wives and families, probing without the aid of words, to reach their conjectural hearts.
And it seemed to him that they looked more pleasantly upon him. Probably it was so, for his black eyes had lost their piercing hardness, and his smile was no longer bitter and edged with scorn. Yet he suffered more, for the melting of the ice within his bosom had freed the springs of our common nature. He yearned for human kindness and human companionship. He thirsted for the voice and the grasp of friendship. He longed inexpressibly—and none the less that he knew himself to have forfeited the right to this—for some pure woman’s devoted love.
He looked out over the ramparts as the snows vanished, and a rosy tinge that spoke of coming spring stole over the leafless copses, and young green grass-blades peeped in the sheltered hollows; and the yellow aconite and the pale primrose bloomed, and the tall scraggy poplars of the thawing marshes showed the black knots of bud. He had never been beloved, it seemed to him.... Doubtless his mother had loved him—poor old Smithwick, dead many years ago, had certainly loved him. Adjmeh might have loved him—as some pampered pretty animal loves the master who tends and feeds it. Henriette had entertained a sensuous, fanciful passion for him. But Love he had never known, in its fullness, as it may exist between woman and man.
Once he had met a woman with a noble, earnest face and calm, pure, radiant eyes, and had gone upon his world’s way and had forgotten her. They had met again, on the night of the coup d’État, at the French Embassy in London. And her glance had pierced to the quick through his armor of selfishness, and vanity, and lust. She had not spared him reproach, though at their parting she had softened and relented. She had said in effect: “Though you are nothing to me now, I might have loved the man you used to be!” What had he not lost by that change? What might he not have gained had he chosen, instead of the easy road of pleasure, the stony path of rectitude! Dimly he began to realize what an inestimable treasure of tenderness, what an inexhaustible mine of shining loyalty, and glowing faith, and pure passion, had lain hidden in the heart of Ada Merling, for the lover who should prove himself worthy of the supreme boon.
Had the lover come? Was the great gift bestowed, or yet withheld? Dunoisse wondered as he paced his daily hour upon the Fortress ramparts, followed by the two warders who were bound to keep him in sight. Was she wedded or free? He asked himself this question over and over. And, by the stab of pain that followed when he said: “She is a wife!” he knew....
He loved her. Happy for her that Fate had sundered them, if by any remote chance she might have loved a man so little worthy of her as Hector Dunoisse. But she never would have ... she never could have.... He tried to follow her in thought as she went upon her selfless way. He saw her pure, sweet influence shed on other hearts to soften, and uplift, and cheer them. He saw the poor relieved by those generous hands. He heard the sick, healed by her skilled and gentle ministrations, blessing her. He dreamed of her—with a cruel pang—as endowing some true man with the priceless treasure of her love. He pictured her with their children rocked in her arms and nourished at her bosom. He imagined her growing old, and moving down the vale of years, leaning on the stalwart sons and matronly, handsome daughters, who should look up to her even as they aided her, in perfect confidence; and whose children, inheriting their tender reverence for that dearest mother, should love and trust her, too. And a great yearning swelled in his desolate heart, and his aching, mateless soul rushed out across the void to her....
“Ada!...”
In the anguish of his loneliness he lifted his arms to the wild, gray sky of March, and, in a voice that was like the wailing of the bitter wind across the marshes, cried on the beloved name:
“Oh, Ada!—Ada!...”