stance which neither ever directly mentioned to the other but which had been living with them for the generations of their children and their children's children. There had been months and, indeed, years throughout which memories of it had become less poignant through the interposition of other and all unrelated events; then associations renewed it and made its memory, for Sarah at least, all but unbearable.
Against the weight of his guilt, she had built up a prop of defense which she had spoken in part to Ethel. Her husband—her boy to whom alone with her in the cabin in the winter forest, their baby had come—had done evil; but, in requital, he had wrought much greater good, as men reckoned good. She had realized that from the evil he had done other wrongs had sprung, as she had seen greater advantages grow from the benefits which he had brought to others; but the wrongs had seemed to her to be running out and soon to stop of their own accord. Now instead—
She arose very quietly and, making sure that her boy was so sound asleep that the light would not waken him, she switched on the shaded bulb above his bed and gazed at him.
Repentance; no, nothing in his face, even when softened in sleep, suggested its possibility. His face was dogged, determined as ever. Cruel? No; she could not think that. Gentle he could be; how patient and gentle he had been that night alone with her when Cecilia came! But he had lived his life unrepentant; and so, in the end, he would die.
The light seemed to disturb him so that his jaw set harder, and one hand, which lay above the bed cover, clenched.
