I had stood, then, thirty
minutes in the corridor below. "You've been such a long time." she said
simply. "I feared for you," and she took my hand in her own that was
cold and clammy.
Chapter VIII
And then, while that dreadful house stood listening about us in the
early hours of this chill morning upon the edge of winter, she told me,
with laconic brevity, things about Mabel that I heard as from a
distance. There was nothing so unusual or tremendous in the short
recital, nothing indeed I might not have already guessed for myself. It
was the time and scene, the inference, too, that made it so afflicting:
the idea that Mabel believed herself so utterly and hopelessly lost--
beyond recovery damned.
That she had loved him with so passionate a devotion that she had given
her soul into his keeping, this certainly I had not divined--probably
because I had never thought about it one way or the other. He had
"converted" her, I knew, but that she had subscribed whole-heartedly to
that most cruel and ugly of his dogmas--this was new to me, and came
with a certain shock as I heard it. In love, of course, the weaker
nature is receptive to all manner of suggestion. This man had
"suggested" his pet brimstone lake so vividly that she had listened and
believed.
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