"Did you hear anything?" said the young man, raising his head. "A cry,
a little cry? No? I can hear footsteps moving up and down. Doctors'
boots always creak. There! Listen! It was nothing. What were you
saying?"
"Twice in the months that followed I tried to run away, to return to
the convent; but the servants whom I had counted my friends deceived
me, and I was brought back to a beating, brought back strapped to his
stirrup iron as I might have been a Nubian slave. Long since he had
ceased loving me; that lasted such a little while. He called me
Madonna, as though it were a term of shame, and cursed me for coldness
and my nunnery ways. He was only happy when he read in my face the fear
I held him in. And I was always afraid!"
"Afraid!" echoed the man. "Until to-night I was never afraid."
"And then my baby came, and I was not afraid any more, but contented
all through. I carried him always in my arms by day and night. So pink
and little and with a smile that warmed like sunshine." She paused and
added plaintively: "It's hard to remember when one was alive.
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