He did not intend to cast her off; he was only muttering vague words in the first spasm of his pain; but she mistook them for commands to her to go.
There was a moment's silence, and then she uncovered her face and said, “I understand—yes, I will go away. I oughtn't to have come back at all—I know that. But I will go now. I won't trouble you any more. I will never come again.”
She kissed the child passionately. It rubbed its little face with the back of its hand, but it did not awake. She pulled the hood on to her head, and drew the veil over her face. Then she lifted herself feebly to her feet, stood a moment looking about her, made a faint pathetic cry and slid out at the door.
When she was gone, Pete, without uttering a word or a sound, stumbled into a chair before the fire, put one hand on the cradle, and fell to rocking it. After some time he looked over his shoulder, like a man who was coming out of unconsciousness, and said, “Eh?”
The soul has room for only one great emotion at once, and he had begun to say to himself, “She's alive! She's here!” The air of the house seemed to be soft with her presence. Hush!
He got on to his feet. “Kate!” he called softly, very softly, as if she were near and had only just crossed the threshold.
“Kate!” he called again more loudly.
Then he went out at the porch and floundered along the path, crying again and again, in a voice of boundless emotion, “Kate! Kate! Kate!”
But Kate did not hear him. He was tugging at the gate to open it, when something seemed to give way inside his head, and a hoarse groan came from his throat.
“She's better dead,” he thought, and then reeled back to the house like a drunken man.