She ceased in half a second to be pale. She gave him
with cutting candour all that had been bottled up in her entrancing
bosom. She told him that the witch had foreseen her a widow (which was
the same thing as prophesying his death), and that she had done, and was
doing, all that the ingenuity of a loving heart could suggest to keep
him alive in spite of the prediction, but that, in face of his infamous
brutality, she should do no more; that if he chose to die and leave her
a widow he might die and leave her a widow for all she cared; in brief,
that she had done with him.
When she had become relatively calm Stephen addressed her calmly, and
even ingratiatingly.
"I'm sorry," he said, and added, "but you know you did say that you were
hiding nothing from me."
"Of course," she retorted, "because I _was_." Her arguments were usually
on this high plane of logic.
"And you ought not to be so superstitious," Stephen proceeded.
"Well," said she, with truth, "one never knows." And she wiped away a
tear and showed the least hint of an inclination to kiss him. "And
anyhow my only anxiety was for you."
"Do you really believe what that woman said?" Stephen asked.
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