Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/371

Rh conversation. We smile, we are merry; then the guests depart, the skeleton stalks forth, the door slams. The sullen face is here again, and the peevish voice points out this fault and that, with never a word of praise. I retort. The voice grows in passion. I feel a child's hand slipped into mine beneath the table in a mute appeal for my silence, and at the touch I am speechless. And then comes sleep. O blessed, blessed sleep! And this has been our life for six years.

God forgive me! I have forgotten my child in this railing against Fate. My darling, at once my dearest happiness and my keenest pain. What ambition did I ever have for any art compared with the longing to see the first intelligence and love wake in my baby's eyes? What name upon the world's lips for me so sweet as "Mother" when first spoken by my child. And yet my pain it is to see him grow up in fear of his father, to watch his frightened eyes go from face to face at meals, now pleading my silence, and again drooping before his father's gaze, or to see him hiding in his terror of a blow as he does now.