What the Piper had said to Evelina came back to her now, eloquent with
appeal;
_The word is not made right. I'm thinking 't is wrong end to, as many
things in this world are until we move and look at them from another
way. It's giving for, that's all. When you have put self so wholly
aside that you can he sorry for him because he has wronged you, why,
then you have forgiven_.
She moved about restlessly. It seemed to her that she could never be
sorry for Anthony Dexter because he had wronged her; that she could
never grow out of the hurt of her own wrong.
"Come with me," said Ralph, choking. "I know it's a hard thing I ask
of you. God knows I haven't forgiven him myself, but I know I've got
to, and you'll have to, too. Miss Evelina, you've got to forgive him,
or I never can bear my disgrace."
She let him lead her out of the house. On the long way to Anthony
Dexter's, no word passed between them. Only the sound of their
footfalls, and Ralph's long, choking breaths, half sobs, broke the
silence.
At the gate, the usual knot of curious people had gathered. They were
wondering, in undertones, how one so skilful as Doctor Dexter had
happened to take an overdose of laudanum, but they stood by,
respectfully, to make way for Ralph and the mysterious, veiled woman in
black. The audible whispers followed them up to the very door: "Who is
she? What had she to do with him?"
As yet, Anthony Dexter's body lay in his own room. Ralph led Miss
Evelina in, and closed the door. "Here he is," sobbed the boy. "He
has gone and left the shame for me. Forgive him, Miss Evelina! For
the love of God, forgive him!"
Evelina sighed. She was standing close to Anthony Dexter now without
fear. She had no wish to torture him, as she once had, with the sight
of her unveiled face. It was the man she had loved, now--the emotion
which had made him hideous to her was past and gone. To her, as to him
the night before, death seemed the solution of all problems, the
supreme answer to all perplexing questions.
Ralph crept out of the room and closed the door so softly that she did
not hear. She was alone, as every woman some day is; alone with her
dead.
She threw back her veil. The morning sun lay strong upon Anthony
Dexter's face, revealing every line. Death had been kind to him at
last, had closed the tortured eyes, blotted out the lines of cruelty
around his mouth, and changed the mask-like expression to a tender calm.
A hint of the old, loving smile was there; once again he was the man
she had loved, but the love itself had burned out of her heart long
ago. He was naught to her, nor she to him.
The door knob turned, and, quickly, she lowered her veil. Piper Tom
came in, with a soft, slow step. He did not seem to see Miss Evelina;
one would have said he did not know she was in the room. He went
straight to Anthony Dexter, and laid his warm hand upon the cold one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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