ead 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, because I did not trust to my darling. No, not
for one year! Is it that since we parted? I am an impatient creature,
and he does not reproach me. I tormented my own, my love, my dear, and
he thought I--I was tired of our life together. No; he does not accuse
me," Dahlia replied to her sister's unspoken feeling, with the shrewd
divination which is passion's breathing space. "He accuses himself. He
says it--utters it--speaks it 'I sold my beloved.' There is no guile in
him. Oh, be just to us, Rhoda! Dearest," she came to Rhoda's side, "you
did deceive me, did you not? You are a deceiver, my love?"

Rhoda trembled, and raising her eyelids, answered, "Yes."

"You saw him in the street that morning?"

Dahlia smiled a glittering tenderness