I
dared not come to you, my wife, my beloved! I could not come because I
was a coward: because--hear me--this was the reason: I have broken my
marriage oath."

Again her lips moved. She caught at a dim fleshless meaning in them.
"But you love me? Richard! My husband! you love me?"

"Yes. I have never loved, I never shall love, woman but you."

"Darling! Kiss me."

"Have you understood what I have told you?"

"Kiss me," she said.

He did not join lips. "I have come to you to-night to ask your
forgiveness."

Her answer was: "Kiss me."

"Can you forgive a man so base?"

"But you love me, Richard?"

"Yes: that I can say before God. I love you, and I have betrayed you,
and am unworthy of you--not worthy to touch your hand, to kneel at your
feet, to breathe the same air with you."

Her eyes shone brilliantly. "You love me! you love me, darling!" And
as one who has sailed through dark fears into daylight, she said: "My
husband! my darling! you will never leave me? We never shall be parted
again?"

He drew his breath painfully. To smooth her face growing rigid with
fresh fears at his silence, he met her mouth. That kiss in which she
spoke what her soul had to say, calmed her, and she smiled happily from
it, and in her manner reminded him of his first vision of her on the
summer morning in the field of the meadow-sweet. He held her to him,
and thought then of a holier picture: of Mother and Child: of the sweet
wonders of life she had made real to him.

Had he not absolved his conscience? At least the pangs to come made him
think so. He now followed her leading hand. Lucy whispered: "You mustn't
disturb him--mustn't touch him, dear!" and with dainty fingers drew off
the covering to the little shoulder. One arm of the child was out along
the pillow; the small hand open. His baby-mouth was pouted full; the
dark lashes of his eyes seemed to lie on his plump cheeks. Richard
stooped lower down to him, hungering for some movement as a sign that he
lived. Lucy whispered. "He sleeps like you, Richard--one arm under
his head." Great wonder, and the stir of a grasping tenderness was in
Richard. He breathed quick and soft, bending lower, till Lucy's curls,
as she nestled and bent with him, rolled on the crimson quilt of the
cot. A smile went up the plump cheeks: forthwith the bud of a mouth was
in rapid motion. The young mother whispered, blushing: "He's dreaming of
me," and the simple words did more than Richard's eyes t