uggles, at work
within her found their outward expression. At times she breathed
quickly, as if in pain; often her eyes closed. In her worn face, the
features marked themselves with strong significance; it was beauty of a
kind only to be felt by a soul in sympathy with her own. To others she
would have appeared the image of stern woe. The gentleness which had
been so readily observable beneath her habitual gravity was absorbed in
the severity of her suffering and spiritual conflicts; only a touching
suggestion of endurance, of weakness bearing up against terrible
fatality, made its plea to tenderness. Withal, she looked no older than
in the days of her happiness; a young life, a young heart, smitten with
unutterable woe.

When the sound of the opening gate made itself heard, she lay back for a
moment in the very sickness of pain it recalled the past so vividly, and
chilled her heart with the fear of what she had now before her. She
stood, as soon as the knock came at the front door, and kept the same
position as Wilfrid entered.

He was startled at the sight of her, but in an instant was holding both
her hands, gazing deep into her eyes with an ecstasy of tenderness. He
kissed her lips, and, as he did so, felt a shudder in the hands he
pressed. A few whispered words were all that he could speak; Emily kept
silence. Then he sat near to her; her hand was still in his, but gave no
sign of responsive affection, and was very cold.

'It was kind to let me see you so soon,' he said. Her fixed look of hard
suffering began to impress him painfully, even with a kind of fear.
Emily's face at this moment was that of one who is only half sensible to
words spoken. Now she herself spoke for the first time.

'You will forgive me that I did not write. It would have been better,
perhaps; it would have been easier to me. Yet why should I fear to say
to you, face to face, what I have to say?'

The last sentence was like self-questioning uttered aloud; her eyes were
fixed on him, and with appeal which searched his heart.

'Fear to say to me?' Wilfrid repeated, gravely, though without
apprehension. 'Has your suffering made strangers of us?'

'Not in the way you mean, but it has so changed my life that I cannot
meet you as I should have done.' Her utterance quickened; her voice lost
its steadiness. 'Will you be very generous to me--as good and noble as
it is in your heart to be? I ask you to give me back my promise--to
release me.