Such were the speculations on her character I then indulged in; and from the standpoint I occupied they were just. But when some time had passed, and I got to penetrate her character more deeply, the undefinable feeling about her I have before spoken of became more definite.
I remember well the pain and horror that accompanied the suspicion when it first flashed upon me. I endeavoured to reason the conjecture away; but the very arguments I brought to bear against it turned traitor and marshalled themselves on the other side. I reviewed her conduct; I recalled her actions, her language, her moods. They increased my apprehension.
Now that love no longer consented to blind me, now that I suffered myself to be possessed with suspicion, I knew that the truest confirmation of my fear was to be sought and found in her eyes. The light that sometimes leaped from their depths, the vacant dullness that sometimes made them lustreless, were not always the sparkle or the shadow of the mood then on her.
I was alone when I first fell into this train of thinking. She had not left me long; and I heard her singing in the drawing-room as she sought in her portfolio for a sketch which she announced her intention to finish. I threw down the book I held and went to the library. My mood was a strange one: a curiosity and a despair—a feverish wish to know the truth, with a terror of that truth. I strode to and fro, dreading that my face (which I could never force to mask my feelings) would provoke her questioning, and striving to master the miserable doubts that had seized me. But she soon missed me and came to the library, peeping in as was her wont, and then, bounding forward with a movement graceful as a child's.
"You shall not read," said she, taking my hand and pulling me to the door. "I want you to watch me finish my drawing of our home."
"Leave me a little, Geraldine; I will be with you soon."
"Why not now?" she asked, pouting her under lip. And then, coming in front of me, she looked right up in my face.
"Arthur," she whispered, "you look now as you look when you are asleep."
"What kind of look is that, Geraldine?" I said, forcing a smile.