wedded, but I am not the woman he loves. I knew when he married
me that another man had won from him the woman he loved. I
thought I could make him forget her. I hoped when I married him;
I hoped again when I bore him a son. Need I tell you the end of
my hopes--you have seen it for yourself.' (Wait, sir, I entreat
you! I have not lost the thread again; I am following it inch by
inch.) 'Is this all you know?' I asked. 'All I knew,' she said,
'till a short time since. It was when we were in Switzerland, and
when his illness was nearly at its worst, that news came to him
by accident of that other woman who has been the shadow and the
poison of my life--news that she (like me) had borne her husband
a son. On the instant of his making that discovery--a trifling
discovery, if ever there was one yet--a mortal fear seized on
him: not for me, not for himself; a fear for his own child. The
same day (without a word to me) he sent for the doctor. I was
mean, wicked, what you please--I listened at the door. I heard
him say: _I have something to tell my son, when my son grows old
enough to understand me. Shall I live to tell it_? The doctor
would say nothing certain. The same night (still without a word
to me) he locked himself into his room. What would any woman,
treated as I was, have done in my place? She would have done as
I did--she would have listened again. I heard him say to himself:
_I shall not live to tell it: I must; write it before I die_.
I heard his pen scrape, scrape, scrape over the paper; I heard
him groaning and sobbing as he wrote; I implored him for God's
sake to let me in. The cruel pen went scrape, scrape, scrape;
the cruel pen was all the answer he gave me. I waited at the
door--hours--I don't know how long. On a sudden, the pen stopped;
and I heard no more. I whispered through the keyhole softly; I
said I was cold and weary with waiting; I said, Oh, my love, let