“Him?” the woman’s look seemed to say, as she turned and pointed with frightful sarcasm to the man at their back.
Paula shrank and hastily shook her head. “No, no, not him, but—Let me tell you a story,” she whispered eagerly. “In a certain country-town not far from here, there is a great empty house. It is dark, and cold, and musty. No one ever goes there but one old lady, who every night at six, crosses its tangled garden, unlocks its great side door, enters within its deserted precincts, and for an hour remains there, praying for one whose return she has never ceased to hope and provide for. She is kneeling there tonight, at this very hour, Jacqueline, and the love she thus manifests is greater than that of man to woman or woman to man. It is like that of heaven or the Christ.”
The woman before her rose to her feet. She did not speak, but she looked like a creature before whose eyes a sudden torch had been waved.
“Fifteen years has she done this,” Paula solemnly continues. “She promised, you know; and she never has forgotten her promise.”
With a cry the woman put out her hands. “Stop!” she cried, “stop! I don’t believe it. No one loves like that; else there is a God and I—” She paused, quivered, gave one wild look about her, and then with a quick cry, something between a moan and a prayer, succumbed to the pain of her injuries, and sank down insensible by the side of her dead child.
With a reverent look Paula bent over her and kissed her seared and bleeding forehead. “For Mrs. Hamlin’s sake,” she whispered, and quietly smoothed down the tattered clothing about the poor creature’s wasted frame.
Mr. Sylvester turned quietly upon the man who had been the cause of all this misery. “I charge myself with the care of that woman,” said he, “and with the burial of your child. It shall be placed in decent ground with all proper religious ceremonial.”