Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/375

Rh when I coughed, blood came into my mouth, and this means death, I know. What is there for the boy when I am gone? Perhaps some other woman will be given my place. What love will she have for my child? My child, who has been fed upon all the love of one woman's heart, at least. Will she have sympathy enough to understand and train his difficult nature? There is one way that I can save him, one way that I can be sure of his happiness, but it is so terrible that I cannot meet it. Oh, I am full of selfishness, for to me only can it bring pain, and to him it means eternal joy. To him it means the kingdom of heaven—to me it means hell, to be lost, tortured, damned, forbidden to God's sight for ever and ever and ever. I have prayed for some other solution to this question of the happiness of my child's future, but nothing comes to me but this—I must kill him.

To-day I have made up my mind. A doctor has told me I may not live a year: my disease has grown upon me; great pains shoot through my chest and quantities of blood come from my lungs at times. I do not dread the act of dying, only the parting from