“You are wrong!” exclaimed Arnold. “Indeed, indeed you are wrong! It’s no excuse—it’s the truth. I was present when the message came about his father.”
She never heeded him, and never moved. She only repeated the words
“He has deserted me!”
“Don’t take it in that way!” pleaded Arnold—“pray don’t! It’s dreadful to hear you; it is indeed. I am sure he has not deserted you.” There was no answer; no sign that she heard him; she sat there, struck to stone. It was impossible to call the landlady in at such a moment as this. In despair of knowing how else to rouse her, Arnold drew a chair to her side, and patted her timidly on the shoulder. “Come!” he said, in his single-hearted, boyish way. “Cheer up a little!”
She slowly turned her head, and looked at him with a dull surprise.
“Didn’t you say he had told you every thing?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you despise a woman like me?”
Arnold’s heart went back, at that dreadful question, to the one woman who was eternally sacred to him—to the woman from whose bosom he had drawn the breath of life.
“Does the man live,” he said, “who can think of his mother—and despise women?”