He halted, and they stood confronted in the light of a street lamp; her face was twisted with weeping. “Why are you afraid?” he demanded, harshly.
“We had a quarrel, and I—I ran away—I said that I would never come back. I left him—”
“You must go back to him,” said Halleck. “He's your husband!” He pushed on again, saying over and over, as if the words were some spell in which he found safety, “You must go back, you must go back, you must go back!”
He dragged her with him now, for she hung helpless on his arm, which she had seized, and moaned to herself. At the threshold, “I can't go in!” she broke out. “I'm afraid to go in! What will he say? What will he do? Oh, come in with me! You are good,—and then I shall not be afraid!”
“You must go in alone! No man can be your refuge from your husband! Here!” He released himself, and, kissing the warm little face of the sleeping child, he pressed it into her arms. His fingers touched hers under the shawl; he tore his hand away with a shiver.
She stood a moment looking at the closed door; then she flung it open, and, pausing as if to gather her strength, vanished into the brightness within.
He turned, and ran crookedly down the street, wavering from side to side in his lameness, and flinging up his arms to save himself from falling as he ran, with a gesture that was like a wild and hopeless appeal.
XXXIV.
Marcia pushed into the room where she had left Bartley. She had no escape from her fate; she must meet it, whatever it was. The room was empty, and she began doggedly to search the house for him, up stairs and down, carrying the child with her. She would not have been afraid now to call him; but she had no voice, and she could not ask the servant anything when she looked into the kitchen. She saw the traces of the meal he had made in the dining-room, and when she went a second time to their chamber to lay the little girl down in her crib, she saw the drawers pulled open, and the things as he had tossed them about in packing his bag. She looked at the clock on the mantel—an extravagance of Bartley's, for which she had scolded him—and it was only half past eight; she had thought it must be midnight.