Her sweet sad face, as he continued speaking, had been slowly upturning to his, and, when their eyes met, he put the little child upon the floor and stretched out his arms, crying, “O Dolly! O wife!”
But she!
There was a look of petrifaction, stranger and more awful even than death, upon her face; her eyes glared, her lips were parted: and to have seen her thus stirless, thus white, thus staring, thus breathless, you would have said that she was dead, even as she sat there.
Then the life leaped into her, she started from the sofa with a loud hysterical laugh, and flung herself on her knees before him, crying, “John! John!”
“Dolly!”
“John! John!” she repeated; and she brought his hand to her eyes, and stared at it; and then grasped his knees and raised her face to his, talking to herself in hurried, inaudible whispers, and fixing a piercing gaze upon him.
“John! John!” she cried out again.
He put his arms around her, and would have pressed her to his heart, but she kept herself away with her hand against his breast, preserving that keen, unwinking, steadfast, wonderful gaze.
“Do you not know me, Dolly?” he cried. “Look at me closely; hear my voice! hear me tell you of the old dear times! We were to meet in the summer, do you remember, Dolly? and we were never more to part; and you were to keep a calendar and mark off the days. O God! what weary days—what endless days to both of us! And do you remember the walks we took the day before we parted, down by the river, where I sat and cried in your arms because the sight of your sorrow broke me down and I had no more comfort to give you?”
But still she would not let him clasp her. Still she kept her hand pressed against him, and her eyes, now growing wild and unreal with fear, upon his face.