Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/506

498 Hark! what is that? Hasty footsteps are crushing the gravel, coming nearer and nearer. Who can it be that comes here so late? And farther away I seem to hear lighter steps, that follow after the first. Have the father and mother returned, too late? And my dull heart gives an exultant leap that Silvia should come too late that Wattie died in my arms, not hers The steps pass on, retreat, come forward again, and in another minute a man steps into the flood of moonlight that fills the room—Paul Vasher. How wild he looks, how strange! After all, did he love the poor little dead son yonder, only his pride forbade his showing it?

"I thought you would have come sooner," I say slowly; "I have been expecting you for days."

"And I am here," he says, as slowly as I.

His face is pale and set, his dark eyes are flaming under his drawn brows.

"Love," he says quietly, and in his quietness there is a deadly strength that chills me, “I cannot live without you. I have come back to tell you so Will you end this life of hell and misery, and come away with me?"

But I do not answer; I only fall back before him, and stand with dilated eyes and parted lips, staring at him.

"Are you afraid, sweetheart? Do you believe that the words uttered by a mumbling old priest make things sacred that are not sacred in themselves? Do you believe that you would be any the more my wife if a form of words had been spoken over us? Are the man and woman, forsooth, who are made for each other, and would cleave to each other through time and death and eternity, to be considered less married in God's eyes than the wretches who are bound together by the fetters of expediency, fraud, and the love of gold?"

But I only hold up my hands and wave him back. I am dumb