hiss like adders. I am quite impenitent. I pray by my bedside, my head
on my Bible, but I only say, 'Yes, yes; that's done; that's deserved, if
there's no mercy.' Oh, if there is no mercy, that's deserved! I say so
now. But this is what I say, Rhoda (I see nothing but blackness when I
pray), and I say, 'Permit no worse!' I say, 'Permit no worse, or take the
consequences.' He calls me his wife. I am his wife. And if--" Dahlia
fell to speechless panting; her mouth was open; she made motion with her
hands; horror, as of a blasphemy struggling to her lips, kept her dumb,
but the prompting passion was indomitable.... "Read it," said her
struggling voice; and Rhoda bent over the letter, reading and losing
thought of each sentence as it passed. To Dahlia, the vital words were
visible like evanescent blue gravelights. She saw them rolling through
her sister's mind; and just upon the conclusion, she gave out, as in a
chaunt: "And I who have sinned against my innocent darling, will ask her
to pray with me that our future may be one, so that may make good to her
what she has suffered, and to the God whom we worship, the offence I have
committed."

Rhoda looked up at the pale penetrating eyes.

"Read. Have you read to the last?" said Dahlia. "Speak it. Let me hear
you. He writes it.... Yes? you will not? 'Husband,' he says," and then
she took up the sentences of the letter backwards to the beginning,
pausing upon each one with a short moan, and smiting her bosom. "I found
it here, Rhoda. I found his letter here when I came.. I came a dead
thing, and it made me spring up alive. Oh, what bliss to be dead! I've
felt nothing...nothing, for months." She flung herself on the bed,
thrusting her handkerchief to her mouth to deaden the outcry. "I'm
punished. I'm punished, because I did not trust to my darling. No, not
for one year! Is it that since we parted? I am an impatient creature,