She was stiff in limb and depressed in mind. After washing at the spring, she wandered listlessly about the cave, surveying old Herne’s scanty store of comforts. Suddenly she paused before a faded picture, framed in long, withered moss, that clung to an abutment of the rock. It was that of a girl, fair, slender and ethereal. There was a wealth of hair, large eyes, and features so faultless that the witching sense of self-satisfaction permeating them, added to rather than marred their loveliness.
The lady—glancing indifferently—suddenly felt a thrill and a pain. A deadly sense of recognition nearly overcame her, as this memento—confronting her like a resurrected chapter of the past—made clear the hitherto inexplicable behavior of their host. She recovered, and looked upon it tenderly, then shook her head gently and sighed.
“You cannot recognize it!” said a deep voice behind her. “You dare not! For the sake of your conscience—your hope in heaven—your fear of hell—you dare not recognize and look upon me!”
She did not look round, though she knew that Herne the Hunter stood frowning behind, but trembled in silence as he went on with increasing energy:
“What does that face remind you of? See you aught beneath that beauty but treachery without pity, duplicity without shame? Lo! the pity and the shame you should have felt have recoiled upon me—me, who alone have suffered.” He broke off abruptly, as though choked by emotion. She dared not face him; she felt incapable of a reply. After a pause, he resumed, passionately: “Oh! Alice, Alice! The dead rest, yet the living dead can only endure. Amid these crags, and throughout the solitude of years, I have fought and refought the same old battle; but with each victory it returns upon me, strengthened by defeat, while with me all grows weaker but the remorselessness of memory and the capacity for pain.”
She still stood, with bowed head, shivering as though his words were blows.
“Have you nothing to say?” he asked. “Does that picture of your own youth recall no vanished tenderness for one who—self-outcast of men—fell to that pass through you?”
“I have a husband,” she murmured, almost in a whisper.
“Aye, and because of that husband I have no wife—no wife—no wife!” His wailing repetition seemed absolutely heartbroken; but sternly he continued: “You have told me where he is. I say to you—hide him—hide him from me! Even this”—he struck his bosom with his Bible feverishly—“may not save him. I have prayed and wrought, but it is as nothing—nothing—when I think—when I remember. Therefore, hide him from me—lest I slay him—”
“You would not—you dare not harm him!” She faced him now, a splendid picture of an aroused wife and mother. “He is not to blame—he knew you not—he has been good to me—and—and—I love him.”