“Well,” she answered with some hesitation, “I’ll tell her.  Take a cheer.”

She disappeared through a door into a back room, and I sat down.  In another minute the door noiselessly reopened, and Rachel Emmons came softly into the room.  I believe I should have known her anywhere.  Though from Eber Nicholson’s narrative she could not have been much over thirty, she appeared to be at least forty-five.  Her hair was streaked with gray, her face thin and of an unnatural waxy pallor, her lips of a whitish-blue color and tightly pressed together, and her eyes, seemingly sunken far back in their orbits, burned with a strange, ghastly—­I had almost said phosphorescent—­light.  I remember thinking they must shine like touch-wood in the dark.  I have come in contact with too many persons, passed through too wide a range of experience, to lose my self-possession easily; but I could not meet the cold, steady gaze of those eyes without a strong internal trepidation.  It would have been the same, if I had known nothing about her.

She was probably surprised at seeing a stranger, but I could discern no trace of it in her face.  She advanced but a few steps into the room, and then stopped, waiting for me to speak.

“You are Rachel Emmons?” I asked, since a commencement of some sort must be made.

“Yes.”

“I come from Eber Nicholson,” said I, fixing my eyes on her face.

Not a muscle moved, not a nerve quivered, but I fancied that a faint purple flush played for an instant under the white mask.  If I were correct, it was but momentary.  She lifted her left hand slowly, pressed it on her heart, and then let it fall.  The motion was so calm that I should not have noticed it, if I had not been watching her so steadily.

“Well?” she said, after a pause.

“Rachel Emmons,” said I,—­and more than one cause conspired to make my voice earnest and authoritative,—­“I know all.  I come to you not to meddle with the sorrow—­let me say the sin—­which has blighted your life; not because Eber Nicholson sent me; not to defend him or to accuse you; but from that solemn sense of duty which makes every man responsible to God for what he does or leaves undone.  An equal pity for him and for you forces me to speak.  He cannot plead his cause; you cannot understand his misery.  I will not ask by what wonderful power you continue to torment his life; I will not even doubt that you pity while you afflict him; but I ask you to reflect whether the selfishness of your sorrow may not have hardened your heart, and blinded you to that consolation which God offers to those who humbly seek it.  You say that you are married to Eber Nicholson, in His sight.  Think, Rachel Emmons, think of that moment when you will stand before His awful bar, and the poor, broken, suffering soul, whom your forgiveness might still make yours in the holy marriage of heaven, shrinks from you with fear and pain, as in the remembered persecutions of earth!”