"And you?" she asked in a wild intense whisper. "Will you go to the river to hide the head I have dishonoured?"
"No. I too will stay and help you to shield and succour the child. Mother and father are the proper guardians of little ones."
"Frank Mellor, are you mad?" she cried out loud, springing to her feet and dashing her hand across her face to clear her vision.
"No; there isn't substance enough in me now to make a madman."
"And," she cried, starting up and facing him, "Frank Mellor, do you know who I am? Do you know that three years ago I left your house under infamous circumstances, and that I brought shame and sorrow and destruction upon your home and you? Do you know that I have made you a byeword in Beechley and London, and wherever you have been heard of? Do you know that I am your wife?"
She had raised her hoarse voice to its highest pitch. Her eyes flashed. She brandished her arms. Her face blazed red in the undisfigured parts, and the red spots turned purple and livid. She was frantically defending the magnanimity of this man against the baseness of her former self, against the evil of her present reputation, against contact with the leprosy of her sin.
"All that needs to be known, I know," he said, in the same calm, gentle voice. "Years ago I lost my wife. I lost sight of her for a long time. To-night I find a sister."
"Sister!" she cried in a whisper, sinking on a chair, and losing at once all her fierce aspect and enhanced colour.
"To-night I find a sister who is in despair because of the loss of her child. I restore her child to her empty arms, and I say, 'My roof is your roof, and my bread is your bread.'" He lit a candle, and handed it to her. "Go to your room where the boy is, and take him in your arms, for it comforts a mother to have her child in her arms. I shall stay here. It is dawn already, and I have work to do. Good-night."