In the last hours she had been thinking no less
than her husband; but where he had considered her, she had thought
chiefly of her boy. Mingled with the fear of her husband's anger had
been the nobler feeling, that she was no longer worthy to be with her
son. The very passion of the love she bore him moved her now with the
determination to leave him. It was always Ninitta's instinct to run
away in trouble, and now, added to the impulse to escape from her
husband was the determination forming itself with awful stress of
anguish in her soul, to go away from Nino; to take away from her son
whom she loved better than life itself, this woman who had no right in
his pure presence. She did not look upon it as an expiation of her
fault; it was only that maternal love gathered up whatever was noble in
her nature, in this supreme sacrifice for her son.
To Herman, looking down upon the cowering figure of his wife, with a
heartbreaking sense of the impossibility of effecting anything by
words, she was simply a cowardly woman who took refuge in tears from
the reproaches which her conduct deserved. Could he have known what was
passing in her heart, it would have moved him to a deeper respect and a
keener pity than he had ever felt for her. No more than a dumb animal
had she any language in which she could have made him understand her
feelings had she tried; and at last he turned away with a choking in
his throat.
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