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When the story was ended, Preston Cheney lay weeping like a woman on his couch; the first tears he had shed since his mother died and left him an orphan of ten. "Berene living and dying almost within reach of my arms almost within sound of my voice!" he cried.
Slowly she read it to the end, as if anxious to make no error in understanding every phase of the long story it related. Beginning with the marriage of her mother to the French professor, Berene gave a detailed account of her own sad and troubled life, and the shadow which the father's appetite for drugs cast over her whole youth.
Hasten then, my dear son; every moment before you arrive will seem an age of sorrow and anxiety to me. A strange smile curved the corners of the Baroness's lips as she finished reading this note and tiptoed down the stairs to her own room again. Meantime the hour for her hot water arrived, and Berene did not appear.
Strange and intricate as the net was which the devil wove about me when I had furnished the cords, I could and would have broken through it after that strange night at once the heaven and the hell of my memory if Berene had remained. As it was I married Mabel, and you know what a farce, ending in a tragedy, our married life has been.
He cast about for some excuse to leave the Palace, yet this would separate him in a measure from his association with Berene, beside incurring the enmity of the Baroness, and possibly causing Berene to suffer from her anger as well. He seemed to be caught like a fly in a net.
God grant that no worse woes befell Berene; God grant that I may meet her in the spirit world and tell her how I loved her and longed for her companionship." The young rector's eyes were streaming with tears, as he reached over and clasped the sick man's hands in his. "You will meet her," he said with a choked voice.
Again that strange smile curved the corners of the Baroness's lips. Maggie was requested to bring up hot water and coffee, and great was her surprise to find the Baroness moving about the room when she appeared with the tray. Half-an-hour later Berene Dumont, standing by an open window with her hands clasped behind her head, heard a light tap on her door.
The passion which had sprung to life in her breast for the young rector, was as strong and unreasoning as the infatuation which her father had once experienced for Berene Dumont; but instead of struggling against the feeling as her father had at least attempted to do, she dwelt upon it with all the mulish persistency which her mother exhibited in small matters, and luxuriated in romantic dreams of the future.
I have loved Berene Dumont with a changeless passion for twenty-three years, and there has not been a day in all that time that I have not during some hours endured the agonies of the damned, thinking of all the disasters and misery that might have come into her life through me. Heaven knows I would have married her if she had remained.
She believed herself to be his spiritual widow, as it were. His mortal clay and legal name only belonged to his wife. Mr Irving had met Berene on a railroad train, and had conceived one of those sudden and intense passions with which a woman with a past often inspires an innocent and unworldly young man. He was sincerely and truly religious by nature, and as spotless as a maiden in mind and body.
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