ing it--lover! and there is none to claim me but he. Oh,
loathsome! What a serpent it is I've got round me! And you tell me God
put it. Do you? Answer that; for I want to know, and I don't know where I
am. I am lost! I am lost! I want to get to my lover. Tell me, Rhoda, you
would curse me if I did. And listen to me. Let him open his arms to me, I
go; I follow him as far as my feet will bear me. I would go if it
lightened from heaven. If I saw up there the warning, 'You shall not!' I
would go. But, look on me!" she smote contempt upon her bosom. "He would
not call to such a thing as me. Me, now? My skin is like a toad's to him.
I've become like something in the dust. I could hiss like adders. I am
quite impenitent. I pray by my bedside, my head on my Bible, but I only
say, 'Yes, yes; that's done; that's deserved, if there's no mercy.' Oh,
if there is no mercy, that's deserved! I say so now. But this is what I
say, Rhoda (I see nothing but blackness when I pray), and I say, 'Permit
no worse!' I say, 'Permit no worse, or take the consequences.' He calls
me his wife. I am his wife. And if--" Dahlia fell to speechless panting;
her mouth was open; she made motion with her hands; horror, as of a
blasphemy struggling to her lips, kept her dumb, but the prompting
passion was indomitable.... "Read it," said her struggling voice; and
Rhoda bent over the letter, reading and losing thought of each sentence
as it passed. To Dahlia, the vital words were visible like evanescent
blue gravelights. She saw them rolling through her sister's mind; and
just upon the conclusion, she gave out, as in a chaunt: "And I who have
sinned against my innocent darling, will ask her to pray with me that our
future may be one, so that may make good to her what she has suffered,
and to the God whom we worship, the offence I have committed."

Rhoda looked up at the pale penetrating eyes.

"Read. Have you read to the last?" said Dahlia. "Speak it. Let me hear
you. He writes it.... Yes? you will not? 'Husband,' he says," and then
she took up the sentences of the letter backwards to the beginning,
pausing upon each one with a short moan, and smiting her bosom. "I found
it here, Rhoda. I found his letter here when I came.. I came a dead
thing, and it made me spring up alive. Oh, what bliss to be dead! I've
felt nothing...nothing, for months." She flung herself on the bed,
thrusting her handkerchief to her mouth to deaden the outcry. "I'm
punished. I'm punished