'
Clara listened, at first scarcely heeding what he said. Then as she
realised the nature of his request and thought of her secret, she
fancied that she must go mad. It seemed as though some diabolical power
were at hand, forcing her slowly, slowly, against her will, to rise up
from her chair, to tell the story, to speak the truth. Her brain
reeled. She could hear the fatal words ringing through the room in the
familiar tones of her own voice, distinctly, one by one, omitting
nothing in the immensity of her self-accusation. She could feel the icy
horror creeping through bone and marrow, as the truth tortured her in
the utterance of it. She could see Greifenstein's grey face
transformed with rage and hatred, she trembled under the inhuman
savageness of his fiery eyes, she saw his tall body rise up before her,
and his hand raised to strike, and she covered her face to die.
It was only a waking dream. The stillness roused her to life, her hands
dropped from her eyes, and she saw her husband sitting quietly in his
place and gazing at her with the same kindly, anxious glance as before.
She had not spoken, nor uttered any sound, and Greifenstein had not
seen the death-pallor under her paint. He had only seen her lift her
hands to her face and take them away again almost immediately. In that
moment she had suffered the pain of hell, but her secret was still her
own. That terrible, unseen power that had pressed her to speak was
gone, and no one knew what was in her heart.
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