“May I come in?” he asked, looking across the room to the bed where Helen lay propped up with pillows, so that she could look out of the window into the garden, even though the tops of the trees alone rewarded her gaze.
“Of course,” Helen weakly replied, yet with a smile, and the nurse discreetly left them to themselves.
Armstrong seated himself on a chair near the bed and gazed in silence at the thin, pale features of the woman before him. This was the wreck of the beautiful girl he had married and brought here to Florence for her honeymoon. What a honeymoon!
“I am glad you came to me at last,” Helen said, quietly, interrupting his convicting thoughts.
“At last!” The words brought him to himself. Mastering his emotion as best he could, he took her thin hand in his, and the fact that she did not withdraw it gave him courage.
“I have longed to come to you each day, but you asked me not to make it harder for you.”
“I am glad you came to me at last,” she repeated.
How should he begin? The sentences he had thought out carefully, which might convey his necessary message and yet spare her, seemed too cold, too meaningless. He glanced up at her helplessly, and the expression on her face helped him to his purpose. Impulsively drawing his chair still nearer to the bed, he poured out to her the self-incriminations which had haunted him for days. In a torrent of pitiless words he pictured himself without mercy. There was no plea for reconsideration, no thought of future readjustment. The one idea was to let her know how fully he realized all that had happened, how powerless he felt himself to make restitution, and his determination to do what now remained to make her future as little overcast as possible by the events which had already taken place.
“I would not have come now except that it is necessary,” he said, brokenly. “I know that to see me must recall unhappy recollections, but there are some matters which we must talk over together. I have not come to plead for any reconsideration—you were right in what you said the last time we talked about it, as you have been in all else. Our marriage was a mistake, and it is I who have made it so. I no longer ask that we try to restore matters to their former position. The only sacrifice within my power is to give you a chance to recover as much as you can of what I have made you lose. The penalty is hard, but well deserved.”
He did not look into her face as he spoke, lest he lose his courage before all was said. “Cerini has told you what you have taught us both, which is another debt I owe you. It should be some little consolation, dear, to know that your expression and your understanding have been so much clearer than those of this librarian, whom I have considered infallible; than those of your husband, whom in the past I know you have respected and loved. Thank God for that love!” he repeated, abruptly.