Just at this point of his soliloquy the door opened, so softly that he did not hear it turn upon its hinges, nor hear the light footstep on the carpet as Katy came in. But when she coughed he started up in wonder at the apparition standing so still before him.
"Morris, oh, Morris," Katy cried, throwing back her veil and revealing a face which Morris could not believe was hers for the lines of suffering and distress stamped so legibly upon it.
But it was Katy, as the voice implied, and, seizing her cold hands, Morris asked: "Katy, why are you here to-night, and why are you alone? Has anything happened? Tell me! your looks frighten me!"
"I am so wretched--so full of pain. I have heard of something dreadful," she replied--"something which took my life away. I could not stay there after that, and so I come to you. I am not Wilford's wife, for he had another, before me--a wife in Italy--who is not dead! And I--oh! Morris, what am I? Untie my bonnet, do! It is choking me to death! I am--yes--I am--going--to faint!"
It was the first time Katy had put the great horror in words addressed to another, and the act of doing so made it more appalling, while the excitement and fatigue she had endured, together with the action of the heat upon her chilled system, took her strength away, and into the chair where Morris had so often seen her in fancy, she sank a crumpled heap of cloaks and furs and bonnet, which Morris tried to remove so as to reach the limp, fainting creature which had said: "I am not Wilford's wife, for he had another before me--a wife in Italy--who is not dead."
Dr. Morris was thoroughly a man, and though much of his sinful nature had been subdued, there was enough left to make his heart rise and fall with great throbs of joy as he thought of Katy free, even though that freedom were bought at the expense of dire disgrace to others and of misery to her. But only for a moment did he feel thus, only till the bonnet was removed and the gaslight fell upon the pallid face with the dark rings beneath the eyes, and the faint, quivering motion around the lips, which told that she was not wholly unconscious.
"My poor little wounded bird," he said, as pityingly as if he had been her father, while, much as a father might kiss his suffering child, he kissed the forehead and the eyelids where the tears began to gather.