Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/170

 we could give her our names. You’d rather have a girl, wouldn’t you, Magda? A girl is more domesticated; you could dress her, and make of her what you liked, give her mind its proper bent yes, I think you would get more quickly used to a girl, wouldn’t you?’

The young woman’s eyes looked glassy, although the two tears on her cheeks had dried, But a fresh pain which would have no end was beginning to take possession of her soul. Her fixed eyes, unable to perceive anything in her immediate surroundings, looked into the far distance, and her heart went out in immeasurable sorrow, hunted to death. If ever she had dared to hope that the day might come when she could acknowledge little Magda, if ever a ray of hope had lighted up her soul all that would be lost now. What she had felt for her own, what she would have done for her with her last breath, was now to be given to an unknown child. The place which she had dreamt of for the unfortunate little creature would never be taken by her. Oh, the pain of it! The awful punishment for a single moment of weakness, the endless atonement for the sin of another! Her Magda would now be really lost to her;