beloved dead, hiding his face in her lap, while she bent over him and
stroked his thick, black hair. True, he did not hear her speak; but when
he looked up again he could see, by the expression of her faithful blue
eyes, that his manly appearance surprised her, and that she rejoiced in
his return to her arms.

She listened compassionately to his laments, and when he paused pressed
his head to her bosom and gazed into his face with such joyous confidence
that his heart swelled, and he told himself that she could not look at
him thus unless she saw happiness in store for him.

Lastly, he began also to confide that he loved no woman on earth more
ardently than the very Daphne whom, when only a pretty little child, she
had carried in her arms, yet that he could not seek the wealthy heiress
because manly pride forbade this to the blind beggar.

Here the anguish of renunciation seized him with great violence, and when
he wished to appeal again to his mother his exhausted imagination refused
its service, and the vision would not appear.

Then he groped his way back to the bed, and, as he let his head sink upon
the pillows, he fancied that he would soon be again enwrapped in the
sweet slumber of childhood, which had long shunned his couch.

It was years since he had felt so full of peace and hope, and he told
himself, with grateful joy, that every childlike emotion had not yet died
within him, that the stern conflicts and struggles of the last years had
not yet steeled every gentle emotion.