His wife accompanied him to the outer door.
"It is chilly!" she shivered, as this was opened. "Are you warmly
clad, love?" feeling his overcoat. "And don't forget your umbrella."
Her hand had not left his shoulder, and, in offering a parting kiss,
she leaned her head there also.
"I wish you would not go!" she said impulsively and sincerely.
"Why?"
"I cannot say--except that I dread to be left alone all day. You may
laugh at me, but I feel as if something terrible were hanging over
me--or you. The spiritual oppression is like the physical
presentiment sensitive temperaments suffer when a thunder-storm is
brooding, but not ready to break. Yet I can refer my fears to no
known cause."
"That is folly." Mr. Aylett bit off the end of a cigar, and felt in
his vest pocket for a match-safe. "You should be able always to
assign a reason for the fear as well as the hope that is in you. You
have no idea, you say, from what recent event your prognostication
takes its hue?"
She laughed, and straightened her fine neck.
"From the same imprudence that has consigned poor Herbert to the
house for the day, I suspect--a late and heavy dinner. I had the
nightmare twice before morning. You will be home to supper?"
"Yes."
Hesitating upon the monosyllable, he took hold of her elbows, so as
to bring her directly before him, and searched her countenance until
it was dyed with blushes.
"Why do you color so furiously?" he asked in raillery that had a sad
or sardonic accent. "I was about to ask if you would be inconsolable
if I never came back. Perhaps your presentiment points to some such
fatality. These little accidents have happened in better-regulated
families than ours."
"WINSTON!"
She gasped and blanched in pain or terror.
"What is the matter? Have I hurt you?" releasing his grasp.
"Yes--HERE!" laying his hand upon her heart, the beautiful eyes
terrified and pathetic as those of a wounded deer. "For the love of
Heaven, never stab me again with such suggestions. When you die, I
shall not care to live. When you cease to love me, I shall wish we
had died together on our marriage-day--my husband!"
He let her twine her arms about his neck, laid his cheek to her
brow, clasped her tightly and kissed her impetuously, madly, again
and yet again--disengaged himself, and ran down the steps. She was
standing on the top one, still flushed and breathless from the
violence of his embrace, when he looked back from the gate, her
commanding figure framed by the embowering creepers, as Mabel's
girlish shape had been when Frederic Chilton waved his farewell to
her from the same spot.