Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/55

"I don't say anything—not anything, you understand."

"You have said everything, Dear," he answered in another tone, and he spoke so reverently and so solemnly that my spirit died within me, and I felt, suddenly and strangely, less like a girl in love than like a girl at prayer. And the tears came to me, I don't know why, from some depth in me that I had never known or felt in all my life; and they began to roll down my cheeks, and I trembled, for I was more afraid of my own tears than I was of him, or of his love.

"God forgive me!" he said. "What have I done? I have made you cry!" And he took my face between his hands.

Oh, Mother, Mother! My dead Mother! The man took my face between his hands, and he kissed me on the lips.—Mother, Mother, Mother!

It is two o'clock. I cannot sleep. I am sitting up straight here in my night-dress. I think I shall never sleep again. The night grows cruelly bright and brighter all the time. I wish the moon could be put out. I feel as if my eyelids had been burned off, as if my eyes would never feel any softness or darkness again. I wonder if there are people in the world who would not