The great solemn eyes that Maybelle's were like when she was troubled were fixed upon Ruth.
"Could you put it away?" she asked. "It has never been away from me for a moment, the fear that Erskine would--would--"
A convulsive shiver ran through her frame, as of one in physical pain.
"Oh!" said Ruth, in terror, "this is all wrong! If you are worse, Erskine will never forgive me."
Irene made a visible effort to control herself, and lay with closed eyes, and motionless, allowing Ruth to bathe her face and make hot applications to her hands and feet. After a little, she spoke, quietly enough.
"I will talk quietly, but you must let me talk, now. I have kept it to myself just as long as I can. Since Baby came, my life has been a daily terror. Will you tell me how you came to know about me, and why you have not told Erskine? I am sure you have not, but I do not understand why."
"Because," said Ruth, solemnly, "Jesus Christ, to whom I belong, told me not to do so. It is your secret, Irene, yours and His. You must let Him tell you what to do with it."
Irene gazed at her. "You are a strange woman," she said at last, "a very strange woman; but you are good, and I have not understood you. I am sorry that I hated you. If I had understood, it might have been--different. I thought you would find it out, sometime, women always do, and I hated you for that; I dreaded you, you know. Every letter that came from you while you were away made me faint and sick because of what might be in it. I was afraid to have Erskine come home at night because of what he might have heard; and I was afraid to have him go away again in the morning for fear it would be the last time he would kiss me."
"Poor child!" The words were wrung from Ruth's heart,--the first words of real tenderness that she had ever spoken to this woman.
Again there came that strange new look into Irene's eyes.
[Illustration: "I'M SORRY THAT I HATED YOU."--_Page 354._]
"You are a good woman," she said slowly. "I am sorry that I hated you. Let me talk now, and tell you about it. I have got to! I ought not to have married that man; I never pretended even to him that I loved him. I married to get rid of dulness and restraint, and to go to Europe. I was a young fool! I got rid of nothing, and instead of feeling only indifference for him I learned to hate him. He was a drunkard, and I hated him for that. Then--I did not like the baby. You can't quite control your horror of that, can you? I don't wonder, now that I have learned what mother-love really is. I could almost hate myself for having such a feeling. You think a mother couldn't--but she can. I turned from the child, just as I had from the father, in disgust. Even so early in her life she looked like him, and I hated him. He was a weak man, and I never had any patience with weakness. Sometimes he was maudlin and loving, and then I hated him worst of all. One day I went away from him and stayed away. That was all I did. Oh, yes, I got a divorce; that was because I hated his name. At first I meant to do something for the child, I didn't know what,--he worshipped the baby,--and then I heard that it died; and I did not know until years afterward that it lived; but it was too late then to do anything. By that time I had met Erskine and discovered what love really meant. Oh, to think how I have loved him! and I have struggled and planned and lied to keep his love! I have even prayed to keep it! and now it is all over!"