After Hal had left, Lorraine sank into a stupor from weakness, and remained thus until towards evening. Then she revived, and seemed to comprehend better al that had happened; al that was happening stil .
She knew that the child she had dreamed of would never lie in her amrs and look up at her with Alymer's eyes. She knew that in the first awful moments of realisation, and deathly weakness, her whole soul had so craved to see Alymer again that she had asked for him.
A few moments later the stupor had come down upon her exhausted senses, and without any further word or thought from her, Hal had gone on her errand.
At first, in the darkened room where she had suffered so much, she remembered only that very soon Alymer might be with her. And the thought, while it quickened her pulses, yet made her feel almost faint with the longing for him to come quickly. What if they were delayed, and this terrible weakness took her away from him without a last meeting.
The thought that death was approaching did not frighten her. She rather welcomed it. When she left London in the summer, she had felt that she could never go back. She had already fixed in her mind the picture of the quiet haven, where she would live restfully with Alymer's child - far away from the turmoil that had marked her life almost from its earliest beginning, and safe from slander.
She dit not mind for herself. The things that most women valued, no longer held much meaning for her. She had experienced more than most; learned more than most how empty success and triumph may become; sounded for herself the shallowness of many things that society regards as prizes.
She had been tired for a long time. Now the tiredness had reached a climax. If the quiet haven might not bless her life, it was, on the whole, better that she should die.
This quiet fatalism only increased her longing to see Alymer once more.
It was the one thing in al existence left to long for. It merged every remaining faculty into one desire. And Hal would bring him. Hal never failed any one.
Then came the night, and instead of a quiet sleep, restlessness seized her. The recol ection of the lawsuit which was to make Alymer's name once for al , came back again and again with merciless insistence, fighting like some desperate thing that last, one, great desire. Try as she would to smother it, after a little period of rest it came back stronger than ever.
In vain she told herself that when he knew she was dying he would have no wish but to hasten to her. In vain, she said also, that success would no longer mean all it had done; that with love crying to him from a death-bed, he would understand its emptiness and scorn it.
Another voice, the voice of her truest self, answered: "Ah! but he is young. Remember he is young - young - young - and you, when you were his age, cared terribly to succeed. You say now that success is empty, but at least you had the satisfaction of learning the fact for yourself. You did not have to take another's word for it, and let your chance pass you by, just at the moment of grasping it. If he is to be left without you, what wil he have then to make up for the great moment lost?
"Nay, worse - what wil he have left to spur him to try and regain his proud position, and go on up the heights of fame? And for you, of al people, to deal this blow to his future - the ambitious future which you yourself have fostered and nourished with such care."
The hours wore on, and stil , in spite of the awful physical exhaustion, the mental battle raged, draining away strength that should have been carefully nursed for each bad hour of many days ahead. The nurse watched beside her with growing alarm, seeing the feverishness and restlessness, where absolute quiet was imperative.
At last she went to her softly, and said, in a sweet, low voice:
"Madame is in trouble. Madame is fretting. It is not good. Madame must try to rest."
Lorraine turned her feverish, pain-driven eyes to the kindly face, with a lookf of beseeching, but she made no reply.
The nurse laid her cool hand on the burning forehead.
"Madame is not a Catholic, but the priest brings healing to all. Shal I ask him to come and pray, that peace may be given to the sick mind?"
"I cannot confess," Lorraine breathed a little gaspingly. "I could not bring myself to it."
"It is not necessary. The priest wil come to pray if madame wishes."
"Yes," was the low response; "please ask him."
The little old man who took care of the souls of the little old-world vil age, and had done for three parts of a century, came to her at once, with a womanly tenderness in his face. In a low voice he blessed her, and then knelt down and prayed quietly.
After a time, som of the anguish died out of Lorraine's eyes. She turned to him weakly and said:
"I am not a Catholic. I do not know if I am anything, but I want to ask you something. If one has sinned, and led another astray, might an act of renunciation perhaps save that other from the consequences of the sin that was not his?"
"Self-sacrifice and renunciation are ever pleasing to God," he told her simply. "He knows that whatever else there is in a heart, with self-sacrifice there is also purity and nobility."
"If I thought I alone need bear the consequences, I think I could do anything," she whispered - "bear anything, renounce anything."
Again the quiet soothing of a prayer fell on her ears. She listened, and heard the old priest praying God an the Holy Virgin to help her to find the courage for the sacrifice her heart called for, that if she were about to enter the presence of the Most High, she might take with her the cleansing of repentance and a self-sacrificing spirit.
She lay stil for some little time listening to the soft cadence of his voice, and then she opened her eyes and looked at him with a ful , sweet look.
"I will do it, Father," she said to him. "Perhaps, if God understands everything, He wil let my anguish of renunciation absolve that other from all sin. It is the most I have to ask of all the powers in heaven and earth."
"The Holy Mother comfort you, my child," he said; and with an earnest benediction left her.
Then Lorraine motioned to the French nurse that she wanted her, and gathering al her remaining strength asked for a telegraph form and pencil. The nurse supported her in her arms, while with a trembling hand she traced faintly the words of her message. It ran:
"Marked change for the better. No need for haste. Come in a few days.
- Lorraine."
It was addressed to Alymer Hermon, at The Middle Temple.
"Please take it now at once," she said. She knew that the Frenchwoman could not read English, and that Jean was not yet awake.