Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/468

460 I. To this unsoiled treasure, "fresh from God," you are mother, not I. Through all my years of misery, I have never once felt the loss of my lover as I feel it now, while my arms close around his son

"You like children?" says Silvia, as the boy slips away from me, and clambers over the bed; "I never did."

"Pitty_mamma!" says the child, pulling at her loose hair, "pitty mamma!” but he does not kiss her or lay his face against hers, nor does she hold out her arms to him. Silvia spoke truth, she has no mother-instinct whatever.

"And you do not love him?" I ask.

"No. I might have, perhaps, if he had been any link between me and his father, but he was the one crowning misdemeanour for which my husband never forgave me. I was told he went on like a madman when he heard it. I never loved but one person in my life, and that was Paul."

"Was there ever such a shameless woman?" say to myself, looking at her. The deathly pallor has left her face, her breathing is quieter, and the bluish tint of her lips is replaced by a tinge of colour. I look at the child; they make a beautiful pair. He has his father's eyes, his mother's skin, her golden hair, his father's mouth and chin, with a haughty trick of holding his head, that brings Paul before my very eyes. Father and son, son and father, how my heart aches for you both—the consolation that the one might afford the other, the love the other might give the one. Somehow the touch of the little hands has smoothed all the resentment and unforgivingness out of my heart. I could not, if I would, speak such words to his mother as I did a while ago.

"I feel better now," she says, wearily; "I shall not die this time, at any rate. Tell me now, once for all, will you forgive me?"

"Yes, I will forgive you." (For the child's sake, I add to myself.)