"And he," the doctor gasped, looking wistfully in her face, "does he--do
you think he loves you?"
Adah colored crimson, but answered frankly: "He never told me so; never said to me a word which a husband should not
hear; but--sometimes I've fancied, I've feared, I've left him abruptly
lest he should speak, for that I know would bring the crisis I so
dreaded. I must tell him the whole then, and by my dread of doing this,
I knew he was more than a friend to me. I was fearful at first that he
might recognise me, but I was much thinner than when I saw him in the
cars, while my hair, purposely worn short, and curling in my neck,
changed my looks materially, so that he only wondered whom I was so much
like, but never suspected the truth."
There was silence, a moment, and then the doctor asked: "How is all this
to end?"
The question brought into Adah's eyes a fearful look of anguish, but she
did not answer, and the doctor spoke again.
"Have I found Lily only to lose her?"
Still there was no reply, and the doctor continued: "You are my wife,
Adah. No power can undo that, save death, and you are my child's mother.
For Willie's sake, oh, Adah, for Willie's sake, forgive."
When he appealed to her as his wife, Adah seemed turning into stone; but
the mention of Willie touched the mother within that girlish woman, and
the iceberg melted at once.
"For Willie, my boy," she gasped, "I could do almost anything; I could
die so willingly but--but--oh, George, that ever we should come to this.
You a deserter, a traitor to your country--lamed, disabled, wholly in
my power, and begging of me, your outcast wife, for the love which
surely is dead--dead. No, George, I do forgive, but never, never more
can I be to you a wife."
There was a rising resentment now in the doctor's manner, as he answered
reproachfully: "Then surrender me at once to the lover hunting for me.
Let him take me back where I can be shot and that will leave you free."
Adah raised her hand deprecatingly, and when he had finished, rejoined:
"You mistake Major Stanley, if you think he would marry me, knowing what
I should tell him. It's not for him that I refuse. It's for myself. I
could not bear it. I--"
"Stay, Adah, Lily, don't say you should hate me;" and the doctor's voice
was so full of anguish that Adah involuntarily advanced toward him,
standing quite near, while he begged of her to say if the past could not
be forgotten. His family were ready, were anxious to receive her. Sweet
Anna Millbrook already loved her as a sister, while he, her husband,
words could not tell his love for her. He would do whatever she
required; go back to the Federal army if she said so; seek for the
pardon he was sure to gain; fight for his country like a hero, periling
life and limb, if she would only give him the shadow of a hope.