"Tell me then, what does it mean--that picture--that horrid
photograph?"
"That means nothing--nothing--a freak--a joke of the doctor's. What
could it mean?" He took it up. "Why, my dear, I am living--living and
well. What should this mean but a joke?"
He laid it on the table again, face downwards. But her eyes showed that
she was not satisfied. Men do not make jokes on death; it is a sorry
jest indeed to dress up a man in grave-clothes, and make a photograph
of him as of one dead.
"But you--you, my Iris; you are here--tell me how and why--and when,
and everything? Never mind that stupid picture: tell me."
"I got your letter, Harry," she replied.
"My letter?" he repeated. "Oh! my dear, you got my letter, and you saw
that your husband loved you still."
"I could not keep away from you, Harry, whatever had happened. I stayed
as long as I could. I thought about you day and night. And at last
I--I--I came back. Are you angry with me, Harry?"
"Angry? Good God! my dearest, angry?" He kissed her passionately--not
the less passionately that she had returned at a time so terrible. What
was he to say to her? How was he to tell her? While he showered kisses
on her he was asking himself these questions. When she found out--when
he should confess to her the whole truth--she would leave him again.
Yet he did not understand the nature of the woman who loves. He held
her in his arms; his kisses pleaded for him; they mastered her--she was
ready to believe, to accept, to surrender even her truth and honesty;
and she was ready, though she knew it not, to become the accomplice of
a crime. Rather than leave her husband again, she would do everything.
Yet, Lord Harry felt there was one reservation: he might confess
everything, except the murder of the Dane. No word of confession had
passed the doctor's lips, yet he knew too well that the man had been
murdered; and, so far as the man had been chosen for his resemblance to
himself, that was perfectly useless, because the resemblance, though
striking at the first, had been gradually disappearing as the man Oxbye
grew better; and was now, as we have seen, wholly lost after death.
"I have a great deal--a great deal--to tell you, dear," said the
husband, holding both her hands tenderly. "You will have to be very
patient with me. You must make up your mind to be shocked at first,
though I shall be able to convince you that there was really nothing
else to be done--nothing else at all."