“You scarcely speak in your right mind yet, Julia. Be quiet, therefore, and try to sleep.”
“Well, if you will sit beside me.”
“I will do so, since you wish for it; but where's the need?”
“Ah! do not ask the need, if you still love me,” was all she said, and looked at me with such eyes—so tearful, bright, so sad, soliciting—that, though I did not less doubt, I could no longer deny. I resumed the seat beside her. She again placed her fingers in my hair, and in a little while sunk into a profound slumber, only broken by an occasional sob, which subsided into a sigh.
Were she guilty—such was the momentary suggestion of the good angel—could she sleep thus?—thus quietly, confidingly, beside the man she had wronged—her fingers still paddling in his hair—her sleeping eyes still turning in the direction of his face?
To the clear, open mind, the suggestion would have had the force of a conclusive argument; but mine was no longer a clear, open mind. I had the disease of the blind heart upon me, and all things came out upon my vision as through a glass, darkly. The evil one at my elbow jeered when the good angel spoke.
“Fool! does she not see that she can blind you still!” Then, in the vanity and vexation of my spirit, I mused upon it further, and said to myself:—“Ay, but she will find, ere many days, that I am no longer to be blinded!” The scales were never thicker upon my sight than when I boasted in this foolish wise.