“You poor child!” he said, “we are not in India, that you should immolate yourself over my dead hopes. What can I do for you. I would free you, if I could.”
“You are not to think of me,” she replied quietly. “It is God who now commands you to think of yourself.”
“Yes!” he exclaimed, “I have made my own instruments of torture. Having thought of myself when it was a sin, I am forced to think of myself when it is a torment. And I escape that thought only to remember my victims. Annette, but one day is left of the four weeks. O my mother! if space could be annihilated, and I could be with you till it is over! If I could but know what has happened, what will happen, to her!”
He had spent the whole day in a church near by, sometimes praying before an altar, sometimes gazing at the pictures, in search of a divine meaning that might be hidden in them; but oftener, withdrawn to a dusky nook where only a single lamp burned before a head crowned with thorns, he gave himself up to grief.
“It is useless to wish and repine,” his wife replied sadly. “That is one of the weaknesses we must cure ourselves of. Since it is only a torment to imagine what [pg 394] may be taking place at home, let us try to banish the thought, leaving all in the hands of God. And now, Lawrence, do you know that you have eaten nothing to-day? When you stay so long again, I shall go after you. In Rome, at this season, it is dangerous to allow the strength to fail. You will soon be ill, if you go on fasting so.”
“And what matter if I should?” he asked.
The wife waited till the servant had placed the dinner on the table and gone out before she spoke, and the moment of consideration had made her resolve on a stern answer, however willingly she would have given a tender one. She had long since discovered that her husband was one of those whom the flatteries of affection enervate instead of stimulating, and she was not sure enough of a radical change having taken place in him to yield to her own impulse to soothe and persuade when reproof might be more effectual.
“Of all the gifts which God has bestowed on you,” she said, “you have cast away every one but life; but with that life you may yet atone, and become a blessing to the world. It is your duty to watch over the only means left you of making reparation.”
He did not show the slightest displeasure at her reproof. On the contrary, there seemed to be something in it almost pleasant to him. Perhaps the suggestion that he might yet be a blessing in the world, incredible as that appeared, inspired him with an undefined hope. He dwelt thoughtfully on her words in a way that was becoming habitual to him whenever she spoke with peculiar seriousness, and Annette, seeing his humility, was half sorry for having put it to the test. With a confused impulse to give him at least some pitiful and perilous comfort, she poured a glass of wine, and placed it by him, well aware that for weeks he had not drunk any.
He put it away decidedly. “I would as soon drink poison, Annette,” he said reproachfully. “I did not think that you would offer it to me.”