Of course, it was some dream-horror she was
laboring under, a nightmare of unimaginable acts and thoughts, but
it was one to hold me back; and when she lay quiet again and her
face resumed its old sweetness in the moonlight, I found myself
staring at her almost as if it were true - what she had said - that
word - that awful word which no woman could use with regard to
herself, even in dreams, unless - Something, an echo from the
discordant chord in our two weeks' married life, rose like the
confirmation of a doubt in my shocked and rebellious breast. From
that hour till dawn nothing in that slowly brightening room seemed
real, not her face lying buried in its youthful locks upon the
pillow, not the objects well-known and well-prized by which we were
surrounded - not myself - most of all, not myself, unless the icy
dew oozing from the roots of my lifted hair was real, unless that
shape, fearsome, vague, but persistent, which hovered in the
shadows above us, drawing a line of eternal separation between me
and my wife, was a thing which could be caught and strangled and -
Oh! I rave! I chatter like a madman; but I did not rave that
night. Nor did I rave when, in the bright, broad sunlight, her eye
slowly unclosed and she started to see me bending so near her, but
not with my usual kiss or glad good morning.
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