She moved her hand. "They might have kissed it, one of them, before they put it in. It never did any one any harm in all its little life. They might have kissed it, one of them."
Gregory felt that some one was sobbing in the room.
Late on in the evening, when the shutter was closed and the lamp lighted, and the rain-drops beat on the roof, he took the cloak from behind the door and went away with it. On his way back he called at the village post- office and brought back a letter. In the hall he stood reading the address. How could he fail to know whose hand had written it? Had he not long ago studied those characters on the torn fragments of paper in the old parlour? A burning pain was at Gregory's heart. If now, now at the last, one should come, should step in between! He carried the letter into the bedroom and gave it to her. "Bring me the lamp nearer," she said. When she had read it she asked for her desk.
Then Gregory sat down in the lamp-light on the other side of the curtain, and heard the pencil move on the paper. When he looked round the curtain she was lying on the pillow musing. The open letter lay at her side; she glanced at it with soft eyes. The man with the languid eyelids must have been strangely moved before his hand set down those words:
"Let me come back to you! My darling, let me put my hand round you, and guard you from all the world. As my wife they shall never touch you. I have learnt to love you more wisely, more tenderly, than of old; you shall have perfect freedom. Lyndall, grand little woman, for your own sake be my wife!
"Why did you send that money back to me? You are cruel to me; it is not rightly done."
She rolled the little red pencil softly between her fingers, and her face grew very soft. Yet:
"It cannot be," she wrote; "I thank you much for the love you have shown me; but I cannot listen. You will call me mad, foolish--the world would do so; but I know what I need and the kind of path I must walk in. I cannot marry you. I will always love you for the sake of what lay by me those three hours; but there it ends. I must know and see, I cannot be bound to one whom I love as I love you. I am not afraid of the world--I will fight the world. One day--perhaps it may be far off--I shall find what I have wanted all my life; something nobler, stronger than I, before which I can kneel down. You lose nothing by not having me now; I am a weak, selfish, erring woman. One day I shall find something to worship, and then I shall be--"
"Nurse," she said; "take my desk away; I am suddenly so sleepy; I will write more tomorrow." She turned her face to the pillow; it was the sudden drowsiness of great weakness. She had dropped asleep in a moment, and Gregory moved the desk softly, and then sat in the chair watching. Hour after hour passed, but he had no wish for rest, and sat on, hearing the rain cease, and the still night settle down everywhere. At a quarter-past twelve he rose, and took a last look at the bed where she lay sleeping so peacefully; then he turned to go to his couch. Before he had reached the door she had started up and was calling him back.
"You are sure you have put it up?" she said, with a look of blank terror at the window. "It will not fall open in the night, the shutter--you are sure?"
He comforted her. Yes, it was tightly fastened.
"Even if it is shut," she said, in a whisper, "you cannot keep it out! You feel it coming in at four o'clock, creeping, creeping, up, up; deadly cold!" She shuddered.
He thought she was wandering, and laid her little trembling body down among the blankets.
"I dreamed just now that it was not put up," she said, looking into his eyes; "and it crept right in and I was alone with it."
"What do you fear?" he asked, tenderly.
"The Grey Dawn," she said, glancing round at the window. "I was never afraid of anything, never, when I was a little child, but I have always been afraid of that. You will not let it come in to me?"
"No, no; I will stay with you," he continued.
But she was growing calmer. "No, you must go to bed. I only awoke with a start; you must be tired. I am childish, that is all;" but she shivered again.
He sat down beside her, after some time she said: "Will you not rub my feet?"
He knelt down at the foot of the bed and took the tiny foot in his hand; it was swollen and unsightly now, but as he touched it he bent down and covered it with kisses.
"It makes it better when you kiss it; thank you. What makes you all love me so?" Then dreamily she muttered to herself: "Not utterly bad, not quite bad--what makes them all love me so?"
Kneeling there, rubbing softly, with his cheek pressed against the little foot, Gregory dropped to sleep at last. How long he knelt there he could not tell; but when he started up awake she was not looking at him. The eyes were fixed on the far corner, gazing wide and intent, with an unearthly light.
He looked round fearfully. What did she see there? God's angels come to call her? Something fearful? He saw only the purple curtain with the shadows that fell from it. Softly he whispered, asking what she saw there.
And she said, in a voice strangely unlike her own: "I see the vision of a poor, weak soul striving after good. It was not cut short, and in the end it learnt, through tears and much pain, that holiness is an infinite compassion for others; that greatness is to take the common things of life and walk truly among them; that"--She moved her white hand and laid it on her forehead--"happiness is a great love and much serving. It was not cut short; and it loved what it had learnt--it loved--and--"
Was that all she saw in the corner?
Gregory told the landlady the next morning that she had been wandering all night. Yet, when he came in to give her her breakfast, she was sitting up against the pillows, looking as he had not seen her look before.
"Put it close to me," she said, "and when I have had breakfast I am going to dress."
She finished all he had brought her eagerly.
"I am sitting up quite by myself," she said. "Give me his meat;" and she fed the dog herself, cutting his food small for him. She moved to the side of the bed.
