The story was for herself, he had said, and for himself.
Himself! Here at last all her pain and wandering of this night ended:
at the bottom of her wound where rankled _his problem_.
From this problem she had most shrunk and into this she now entered:
She sacrificed herself in him! She laid upon herself his temptation
and his struggle.
* * * * *
Taking her candle, she passed back into her bedroom and screened it
where she had screened it before; then went into his bedroom.
She put her wedding ring on again with blanched lips. She went to his
bedside, and drawing to the pillow the chair on which his clothes were
piled, sat down and laid her face over on it; and there in that shrine
of feeling where speech is formed, but whence it never issues, she
made her last communion with him:
_"You, to whom I gave my youth and all that youth could mean to me;
whose children I have borne and nurtured at my breast--all of whose
eyes I have seen open and the eyes of some of whom I have closed;
husband of my girlhood, loved as no woman ever loved the man who took
her home; strength and laughter of his house; helper of what is best
in me; my defender against things in myself that I cannot govern;
pathfinder of my future; rock of the ebbing years! Though my hair turn
white as driven snow and flesh wither to the bone, I shall never cease
to be the flame that you yourself have kindled.
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