Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/924

856 cied Marie as enthusiastically as Gertrude had known he would not fancy the delicate boy. With the little girl's help she lifted him by degrees, a dead weight, from the depths of self-depreciation—which Mrs. Darcy actually refrained from proclaiming by its opposite name.

One evening, after he had watched her put the little folks to bed, he broke out with: "Have you ever thought that the essence of Christianity is motherhood, unsexed, impersonated,—love, service, self-abnegation, vicarious suffering? You are the personification of Christianity, Gertrude. Women like you explain the deification of Mary."

"Why, Ned!" Tenderness, faintly touched with amusement, warm with sympathy; and gratitude, as fresh and eager as the girl's.

"I believe there is some such esoteric explanation of the persistence in Christianity of the idea of the motherhood of God.—The Motherhood of God! There, that shall be the title-poem of my next volume, dedicated openly to you. You are a living sonnet, dear." The Ned she knew—look, intonation, manner, different just for her! Each positively beautiful—to the other; and as the vehicle, the expression of love. "I wish I could express things in my language as well as you do in yours. You have the ideal always in yourself. But I have to create, seek it," he hesitated, wistfully, beginning to droop again, "often led astray by wandering fires."

The amende honorable was made; Gertrude's quick hand hurried to accept it and dismiss the dangerous subject forever.



