I was fearful at first that he might recognise me, but I was much thinner than when I saw him in the cars, while my hair, purposely worn short, and curling in my neck, changed my looks materially, so that he only wondered whom I was so much like, but never suspected the truth." There was silence, a moment, and then the doctor asked: "How is all this to end ?" The question brought into Adah's eyes a fearful look of anguish, but she did not answer, and the doctor spoke again.
"Have I found Lily only to lose her ?" Still there was no reply, and the doctor continued: "You are my wife, Adah.

No power can undo that, save death, and you are my child's mother.
For Willie's sake, oh, Adah, for Willie's sake, forgive." When he appealed to her as his wife, Adah seemed turning into stone; but the mention of Willie touched the mother within that girlish woman, and the iceberg melted at once.
"For Willie, my boy," she gasped, "I could do almost anything; I could die so willingly but--but--oh, George, that ever we should come to this.
You a deserter, a traitor to your country--lamed, disabled, wholly in my power, and begging of me, your outcast wife, for the love which surely is dead--dead.

No, George, I do forgive, but never, never more can I be to you a wife." There was a rising resentment now in the doctor's manner, as he answered reproachfully: "Then surrender me at once to the lover hunting for me.
Let him take me back where I can be shot and that will leave you free." Adah raised her hand deprecatingly, and when he had finished, rejoined: "You mistake Major Stanley, if you think he would marry me, knowing what I should tell him.

It's not for him that I refuse.

It's for myself.