The Choir Invisible

At the sight of her and with the remembrance of how he had misjudged and

mistreated her--most of all swept on by some lingering flood of the old

tenderness--he stepped forward put his arms softly around her, drew her

closely to him, and buried his check against hers: "Amy!" he murmured, his voice quivering his whole body trembling, his heart

knocking against his ribs like a stone.

She struggled out of his arms with a cry and recognizing him, drew her

figure up to its full height. Her eyes filled with passion, cold and

resentful.

He made a gesture.

"Wait!" he cried. "Listen."

He laid bare everything--from his finding of the bundle to the evening of

the ball.

He was standing by the doorway. A small window in the opposite wall of the

low room opened toward the West. Through this a crimson light fell upon his

face revealing its pallor, its storm, its struggle for calmness.

She stood a few yards off with her face in shadow. As she had stepped

backward, one of her hands had struck against her spinning-wheel and now

rested on it; with the other she had caught the edge of the table. From the

spinning-wheel a thread of flax trailed to the ground; on the table lay a

pair of iron shears.

As he stood looking at her facing him thus in cold half-shadowy anger--at

the spinning wheel with its trailing flax--at, the table with its iron

shears--at her hands stretched forth as if about to grasp the one and to lay

hold on the other--he shudderingly thought of the ancient arbitress of Life

and Death--Fate the mighty, the relentless. The fancy passed and was

succeeded by the sense of her youth and loveliness. She wore a dress of

coarse snow-white homespun, narrow in the skirt and fitting close to her

arms and neck and to the outlines of her form. Her hair was parted simply

over her low beautiful brow. There was nowhere a ribbon or a trifle of

adornment: and in that primitive, simple, fearless revelation of itself her

figure had the frankness of a statue. While he spoke the anger died out of

her face. But in its stead came something worse--hardness; and something

that was worse still--an expression of revenge.

"If I was unfeeling with you," he implored, "only consider! You had broken

your engagement without giving any reason; I saw you at the party dancing

with Joseph; I believed myself trifled with, I said that if you could treat

in that way there was nothing you could say that I cared to hear. I was

blind to the truth; I was blinded by suffering.