'I am afraid you are right.'
'No, he is doomed; my poor boy is doomed. If you see him, what is there that you can say to comfort him?'
'I shall not try to comfort him. I shall bid him do his duty. Comfort will come to him in no other way.'
'Shall you speak to him of me?'
'Yes, certainly. If I have any influence, I shall bring him to you before an hour is over.'
Then she caught his hand and the blood rushed to her face.
'God bless you for this!' she whispered. 'Go; do not keep me waiting. Go, for Heaven's sake!'
'You must promise me one thing first: that you will control yourself. Think of him, of the day and the night he has passed. He will not be fit for any scene. If you reproach him, you will only send him from you again.'
'I will promise anything—everything—if you will only bring him.' And now her eyes were wet; it seemed as though he had given her new life. She sat erect; she was no longer like a marble image of despair. 'If I can only see him, if he will let me speak to him! but it is this emptiness—this blank, this dreadful displeasure—that is shutting me out from him, that is killing me by inches.'
And here she put her hand to her throat, as though the words suffocated her.