"Don't--don't! It kills me quite, that!" she shrieked. "O have
mercy upon me--have mercy!"
He did not answer; and, sickly white, she jumped up.
"Angel, Angel! what do you mean by that laugh?" she cried out. "Do
you know what this is to me?"
He shook his head.
"I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you happy! I have
thought what joy it will be to do it, what an unworthy wife I shall
be if I do not! That's what I have felt, Angel!"
"I know that."
"I thought, Angel, that you loved me--me, my very self! If it is
I you do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so? It
frightens me! Having begun to love you, I love you for ever--in all
changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself. I ask no more.
Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?"
"I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you."
"But who?"
"Another woman in your shape."
She perceived in his words the realization of her own apprehensive
foreboding in former times. He looked upon her as a species of
imposter; a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent one. Terror was
upon her white face as she saw it; her cheek was flaccid, and her
mouth had almost the aspect of a round little hole.
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