CHAPTER X

THOU KNOWEST THE SECRETS OF OUR HEARTS

And Lali? How had the night gone for her? When she rose from the
child's cot, where her lips had caught the warmth that her husband had
left on them, she stood for a moment bewildered in the middle of the
room. She looked at the door out of which he had gone, her bosom beating
hard, her heart throbbing so that it hurt her--that she could have cried
out from mere physical pain. The wifedom in her was plundering the wild
stores of her generous soul for the man, for--as Richard had said that
day, that memorable day!--the father of her child. But the woman, the
pure translated woman, who was born anew when this frail life in its pink
and white glory crept out into the dazzling world, shrank back, as any
girl might shrink that had not known marriage. This child had come--from
what?--She shuddered now--how many times had she done so since she first
waked to the vulgar sacrilege of her marriage? She knew now that every
good mother, when her first child is born, takes it in her arms, and, all
her agony gone, and the ineffable peace of delivered motherhood come,
speaks the name of its father, and calls it his child. But--she
remembered it now--when her child was born, this little waif, the fruit
of a man's hot, malicious hour, she wrapped it in her arms, pressed its
delicate flesh to the silken folds of her bosom, and weeping, whispered
only: "My child, my little, little child!"

She had never, as many a wife far from her husband has done, talked to
her child of its father, told it of his beauty and his virtues, arrayed
it day by day in sweet linen and pretty adornments, as if he were just
then knocking at her door; she had never imagined what he would say when
he did come. What could such a father think of his child, born of a