And when all this was told Amabel put down her hands. His stillness had grown uncanny: he might not have been there; she might have been talking in an empty room. But he was there, sitting opposite her, as she had last seen him, half turned in his seat, fallen together a little as though his breathing were very slight and shallow; and his dilated eyes, strange, deep, fierce, were fixed on her. She shut the sight out with her hands.
She stumbled a little now in speaking on, and spoke more slowly. She knew herself condemned and the rest seemed unnecessary. It only remained to tell him how her mistaken love had also shut him out; to tell, slightly, not touching Lady Elliston"s name, of how the mistake had come to pa.s.s; to say, finally, on long, failing breaths, that her sin had always been between them but that, until the other day, when he had told her of his ideals, she had not seen how impa.s.sable was the division.
"And now," she said, and the convulsive trembling shook her as she spoke, "now you must say what you will do. I am a different woman from the mother you have loved and reverenced. You will not care to be with the stranger you must feel me to be. You are free, and you must leave me. Only," she said, but her voice now shook so that she could hardly say the words--"only--I will always be here--loving you, Augustine; loving you and perhaps,--forgive me if I have no right to that, even--hoping;--hoping that some day, in some degree, you may care for me again."
She stopped. She could say no more. And she could only hear her own shuddering breaths.
Then Augustine moved. He pushed back his chair and rose. She waited to hear him leave the room, and leave her, to her doom, in silence.
But he was standing still.
Then he came near to her. And now she waited for the words that would be worse than silence.
But at first there were no words. He had fallen on his knees before her; he had put his arms around her; he was pressing his head against her breast while, trembling as she trembled, he said:--"Mother--Mother--Mother."
All barriers had fallen at the cry. It was the cry of the exile, the banished thing, returning to its home. He pressed against the heart to which she had never herself dared to draw him.
But, incredulous, she parted her hands and looked down at him; and still she did not dare enfold him.
"Augustine--do you understand?--Do you still love me?--"
"Oh Mother," he gasped,--"what have I been to you that you can ask me!"
"You can forgive me?" Amabel said, weeping, and hiding her face against his hair.
They were locked in each other"s arms.
And, his head upon her breast, as if it were her own heart that spoke to her, he said:--"I will atone to you.--I will make up to you--for everything.--You shall be glad that I was born."