Then she looked at him once more, a terrible story in her eyes, if

he could but have read it.

Twice she opened her stiff lips to speak, and twice the words were

overwhelmed by the surges of her misery, which bore them back into

the depths of her heart.

He thought that he had come upon her too suddenly, and he attempted

to soothe her with soft murmurs of love, and to woo her to his

outstretched hungry arms once more. But when she saw this motion of

his, she made a gesture as though pushing him away; and with an

inarticulate moan of agony she put her hands to her head once more,

and turning away began to run blindly towards the town for

protection.

For a minute or so he was stunned with surprise at her behaviour;

and then he thought it accounted for by the shock of his accost, and

that she needed time to understand the unexpected joy. So he

followed her swiftly, ever keeping her in view, but not trying to

overtake her too speedily.

'I have frightened my poor love,' he kept thinking. And by this

thought he tried to repress his impatience and check the speed he

longed to use; yet he was always so near behind that her quickened

sense heard his well-known footsteps following, and a mad notion

flashed across her brain that she would go to the wide full river,

and end the hopeless misery she felt enshrouding her. There was a

sure hiding-place from all human reproach and heavy mortal woe

beneath the rushing waters borne landwards by the morning tide.

No one can tell what changed her course; perhaps the thought of her

sucking child; perhaps her mother; perhaps an angel of God; no one

on earth knows, but as she ran along the quay-side she all at once

turned up an entry, and through an open door.

He, following all the time, came into a quiet dark parlour, with a

cloth and tea-things on the table ready for breakfast; the change

from the bright sunny air out of doors to the deep shadow of this

room made him think for the first moment that she had passed on, and

that no one was there, and he stood for an instant baffled, and

hearing no sound but the beating of his own heart; but an

irrepressible sobbing gasp made him look round, and there he saw her

cowered behind the door, her face covered tight up, and sharp

shudders going through her whole frame.

'My love, my darling!' said he, going up to her, and trying to raise

her, and to loosen her hands away from her face. 'I've been too

sudden for thee: it was thoughtless in me; but I have so looked

forward to this time, and seeing thee come along the field, and go

past me, but I should ha' been more tender and careful of thee. Nay!

let me have another look of thy sweet face.' All this he whispered in the old tones of manoeuvring love, in that

voice she had yearned and hungered to hear in life, and had not

heard, for all her longing, save in her dreams.




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