The wife sat among the bronze-hued women, gently blonde, with a sweet face like a dove.  She did not weep, but she trembled.  She was so afraid, that the fear was almost killing her.  She bit her teeth together, so that no one should hear how they chattered.  When steps were heard, when the clattering sounded, when some one spoke to her, she started up.

She sat with her husband’s letter in her pocket.  She thought of now one line in it and now another.  There stood:  “I can bear no longer to see you both.”  And in another place:  “I know now that you and Erikson mean to elope.”  And again:  “You shall not do that, for people’s evil talk would make you unhappy.  I shall disappear, so that you can get a divorce and be properly married.  Erikson is a good workman and can support you well.”  Then farther down:  “Let people say what they will about me.  I am content if only they do not think any evil of you, for you could not bear it.”

She did not understand it.  She had not meant to deceive him.  Even if she had liked to chat with the young apprentice, what had her husband to do with that?  Love is an illness, but it is not mortal.  She had meant to bear it through life with patience.  How had her husband discovered her most secret thoughts?

She was tortured at the thought of him!  He must have grieved and brooded.  He had wept over his years.  He had raged over the young man’s strength and spirits.  He had trembled at the whisperings, at the smiles, at the hand pressures.  In burning madness, in glowing jealousy, he had made it into a whole elopement history, of which there was as yet nothing.

She thought how old he must have been that night when he went.  His back was bent, his hands shook.  The agony of many long nights had made him so.  He had gone to escape that existence of passionate doubting.

She remembered other lines in the letter:  “It is not my intention to destroy your character.  I have always been too old for you.”  And then another:  “You shall always be respected and honored.  Only be silent, and all the shame will fall on me!”

The wife felt deeper and deeper remorse.  Was it possible that people would be deceived?  Would it do to lie so too before God?  Why did she sit in the cottage, pitied like a mourning mother, honored like a bride on her wedding day?  Why was it not she who was homeless, friendless, despised?  How can such things be?  How can God let himself be so deceived?

Over the great dresser hung a little bookcase.  On the top shelf stood a big book with brass clasps.  Behind those clasps was hidden the story of a man and a woman who lied before God and men.  “Who has suggested to you, woman, to do such things?  Look, young men stand outside to lead you away.”

The woman stared at the book, listened for the young men’s footsteps.  She trembled at every knock, shuddered at every step.  She was ready to stand up and confess, ready to fall down and die.