"Do you suppose," he said, in a voice which, though low, was full of feeling, "that I do not know how absorbing a thing it is to give up life to a woman? Here I am, when she is nothing to me, when I do not mean ever to see her again, going into this place simply because here she was half a minute in my arms, because here for two minutes she looked at me as her preserver. It is sin, and I know it; but it is too strong for me."
"But, Phil," Maurice exclaimed in astonishment, "there is surely no harm in going to see a sick woman."
"So I told myself, and so I kept saying over and over till the talk we've had forced me to stop lying to myself. I'm not going to see a sick woman. I'm going to stand where she stood that day."
"If you feel that way about it," Maurice said, putting his hand on the other's arm, "you ought not to go in."
"But obedience, Phil. Think what you were saying about the lecture."
"Nobody has forbidden me," Ashe responded defiantly. "I will go in. I had made up my mind before I came. Oh, I shall do penance enough for it; you need not be afraid of that. I shall suffer enough for it."
He started up the stairs, and Maurice followed blindly, full of sympathy and dismay.
THE BITTER PAST All's Well that Ends Well, v. 3.
They found the old woman in bed, attended by a slatternly half-grown girl, who was reading by the dying light a torn and dirty illustrated paper. There was little furniture in the chamber; merely the frowsy bed, a bare table, a single broken chair besides the one in which the girl was sitting. The floor was bare and dirty; one of the window-panes was broken and stuffed with a bundle of paper. There were a rusty stove, a few dishes on the shelf, a kettle and a tin tea-pot. On the window-sill by the bed were a medicine bottle and a cup.
"How do you do, Mrs. Murphy?" Ashe asked. "Are you any better to-day?"
"No better, thank yer riverince. I'll never be better again. My back is broke, and the pain in me is like purgatory already."
The slatternly girl laid her paper on her knees, but she neither rose nor spoke. To Maurice she seemed to have an air of contempt.
"I am sorry to hear it, Mrs. Murphy," said Ashe. "I thought that I would drop in and ask after you."