Hard as it was while he held the hand of the wife, his little son's mother, who might be called his bride, and drew him by the contact of their blood to a memory, seeming impossible, some other world's attested reality,--she the angel, he the demon of it,--unimaginable, yet present, palpable, a fact beyond his mind, he let her hand fall scarce pressed.

Did she expect more than the common sense of it to be said?
The 'more' was due to her, and should partly be said at their next meeting for the no further separating; or else he would vow in his heart to spread it out over a whole life's course of wakeful devotion, with here and there a hint of his younger black nature.

Better that except for a desire seizing him to make sacrifice of the demon he had been, offer him up hideously naked to her mercy.

But it was a thing to be done by hints, by fits, by small doses.

She could only gradually be brought to the comprehension of how the man or demon found indemnification under his yoke of marriage in snatching her, to torment, perhaps betray; and solace for the hurt to his pride in spreading a snare for the beautiful Henrietta.