At the sight of her and with the remembrance of how he had misjudged and
mistreated her--most of all swept on by some lingering flood of the old
tenderness--he stepped forward put his arms softly around her, drew her
closely to him, and buried his check against hers: "Amy!" he murmured, his voice quivering his whole body trembling, his heart
knocking against his ribs like a stone.
She struggled out of his arms with a cry and recognizing him, drew her
figure up to its full height. Her eyes filled with passion, cold and
resentful.
He made a gesture.
"Wait!" he cried. "Listen."
He laid bare everything--from his finding of the bundle to the evening of
the ball.
He was standing by the doorway. A small window in the opposite wall of the
low room opened toward the West. Through this a crimson light fell upon his
face revealing its pallor, its storm, its struggle for calmness.
She stood a few yards off with her face in shadow. As she had stepped
backward, one of her hands had struck against her spinning-wheel and now
rested on it; with the other she had caught the edge of the table. From the
spinning-wheel a thread of flax trailed to the ground; on the table lay a
pair of iron shears.
As he stood looking at her facing him thus in cold half-shadowy anger--at
the spinning wheel with its trailing flax--at, the table with its iron
shears--at her hands stretched forth as if about to grasp the one and to lay
hold on the other--he shudderingly thought of the ancient arbitress of Life
and Death--Fate the mighty, the relentless. The fancy passed and was
succeeded by the sense of her youth and loveliness. She wore a dress of
coarse snow-white homespun, narrow in the skirt and fitting close to her
arms and neck and to the outlines of her form. Her hair was parted simply
over her low beautiful brow. There was nowhere a ribbon or a trifle of
adornment: and in that primitive, simple, fearless revelation of itself her
figure had the frankness of a statue. While he spoke the anger died out of
her face. But in its stead came something worse--hardness; and something
that was worse still--an expression of revenge.
"If I was unfeeling with you," he implored, "only consider! You had broken
your engagement without giving any reason; I saw you at the party dancing
with Joseph; I believed myself trifled with, I said that if you could treat
in that way there was nothing you could say that I cared to hear. I was
blind to the truth; I was blinded by suffering.