Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/146

 Magda’s fateful letter, which had so recently caused him the bitterest moment of his life, he glanced once more at the lines written by this unknown, pining little creature. Now he could enter into it much more. Alas! How much bitterness this little heart had already had to taste! But how great must have been the pain that his wife had suffered all the time since she had been tied to him and separated from her child day by day, whole months, years  ten long years. What fortitude this delicate woman had shown in mastering herself and enduring the separation or was she upheld by some hope? What was this hope?

Hron stopped short at the words: ‘Dearest Mummy, come again, come on my birthday, on the day of St. Peter and St. Paul’

Yes, Magda had complied with her wish. It was a week since she went away, and to-day was St. Peter and St. Paul. At the moment when her fateful secret had revealed itself to him accidentally, a little creature in some distant place was laughing with joy at her mother’s embrace, and his wife was happy in the presence of her growing daughter, answering her thousand questions, asking a thousand herself, kissing her, kissing her for a