"It is hard for me to say," he answered. "I have not your vivid imagination, my dear. I have no power of putting myself, at a moment's notice, into a position that is not my own, and of knowing how I should act in it."
"But suppose your wife was close to you—as close as I am now? Suppose she had just told you the dreadful secret, and was standing before you—as I am standing now—with the happiness of her whole life to come depending on one kind word from your lips? Oh, Lenny, you would not let her drop broken-hearted at your feet? You would know, let her birth be what it might, that she was still the same faithful creature who had cherished and served and trusted and worshiped you since her marriage-day, and who asked nothing in return but to lay her head on your bosom, and to hear you say that you loved her? You would know that she had nerved herself to tell the fatal secret, because, in her loyalty and love to her husband, she would rather die forsaken and despised, than live, deceiving him? You would know all this, and you would open your arms to the mother of your child, to the wife of your first love, though she was the lowliest of all lowly born women in the estimation of the world? Oh, you would, Lenny, I know you would!"
"Rosamond! how your hands tremble; how your voice alters! You are agitating yourself about this supposed story of yours, as if you were talking of real events."
"You would take her to your heart, Lenny? You would open your arms to her without an instant of unworthy doubt?"
"Hush! hush! I hope I should."
"Hope? only hope? Oh, think again, love, think again; and say you know you should!"
"Must I, Rosamond? Then I do say it."
She drew back as the words passed his lips, and took the letter from the table.
"You have not yet asked me, Lenny, to read the letter that I found in the Myrtle Room. I offer to read it now of my own accord."
She trembled a little as she spoke those few decisive words, but her utterance of them was clear and steady, as if her consciousness of being now irrevocably pledged to make the disclosure had strengthened her at last to dare all hazards and end all suspense.