She heard him dimly, feeling these words irrelevant. She knew that Hugh must never have her back; that she could never go back to Hugh; that her life henceforth was dedicated. And yet Bertram was kind, she felt that, though dimly feeling, too, that her old image of him had grown tarnished. But her mind was far from Bertram and the mitigations he offered. She was fixed on that radiant figure, her husband, her knight, who had stooped to her in her abasement, her agony, and had lifted her from dust and darkness to the air where she could breathe,--and bless him.
"Tell him--I bless him,"--she said to Bertram. She could say nothing more. There were other memories of that day, too, but even more dim, more irrelevant. Bertram had brought papers for her to sign, saying: "I know you'll want to be very generous with Hugh now," and she had raised herself on her elbow to trace with the fingers that trembled the words he dictated to her.
There was sorrow, indeed, to look back on after that. Poor Bertram died only a month later, struck down by an infectious illness. He was not to see or supervise the rebuilding of his sister's shattered life, and the anguish in her sorrow was the thought of all the pain that she had brought to his last months of life: but this sorrow, after the phantoms, the nightmares, was like the weeping of tears after a dreadful weeping of blood. Her tears fell as she lay there, propped on her pillows--for she was very ill--and looking out over the Autumn fields; she wept for poor Bertram and all the pain; life was sad. But life was good and beautiful. After the flames, the suffocation, it had brought her here, and it showed her that radiant figure, that goodness and beauty embodied in human form. And she had more to help her, for he wrote to her, a few delicately chosen words, hardly touching on their own case, his and hers, but about her brother's death and of how he felt for her in her bereavement, and of what a friend dear Bertram had been to himself. "Some day, dear Amabel, you must let me come and see you" it ended; and "Your affectionate husband."
It was almost too wonderful to be borne. She had to close her eyes in thinking of it and to lie very still, holding the blessed letter in her hand and smiling faintly while she drew long soft breaths. He was always in her thoughts, her husband; more, far more, than her coming child. It was her husband who had made that coming a thing possible to look forward to with resignation; it was no longer the nightmare of desolate flights and hidings.