error-stricken expression of a child
frightened with bogies.

"Go back? After what he has done to me? You would not send me back? Seer
Marcous, darling, you will keep me with you? I will be good, good, good.
But go back to Pasquale? Oh, no-o-o!"

She fell back in her sofa-corner, and fixed her great, deep imploring
eyes on me.

"My dear," said I, "you know this is your home as long as ever you
choose to stay in it--but--" and I stroked her hair gently--"if he
comes back when your child is born--his child--"

She drew herself up superbly.

"It is my child--my very, very own," cried Carlotta. "It is mine,
mine--and I shall not allow any one to touch it--" and then her face
softened--"except Seer Marcous."

CHAPTER XXIII

Behold Carlotta again installed in my house which she regarded as her
home. Heaven forbid that I should sow any doubt thereof in her mind.

I had learned perhaps one lesson: the meaning of love. The love that
is desire alone, though sung in all romance of all the ages, is of the
brute nature and is doomed to perish. The love that pardons, endures
through wrong, contents itself in abnegation, is of the imperishable
things that draw weak man a little nearer to the angels. When Carlotta
wept upon my shoulder during those few first moments of her return I
knew that all resentment was gone from my heart, that it would have
been a poor, ignoble thing. Had she come back to me leprous of body and
abominable of spirit, it would not have mattered. I would have forgiven
her, loved her, cherished her just the same. It was a question, not
of reason, not of human pity, not of quixotism; not of any argument or
sentiment for which I could be responsible. I was helpless, obeying a
reflex action of the soul.

The days passed tranquilly. In spite of pain I felt an odd happiness. I
had nothing selfishly to hope for. Perhaps I had aged five years in one,
and I viewed life differently. It was enough for me that she had come
home, to the haven where no harm could befall her. She was my appointed
task, even as her husband was Judith's. I recognised in myself the man
with the one talent. The deep wisdom of the parable can be taken to
inmost heart for comfort only by men of little destinies. With infinite
love and patience to mould Carlotta into a sweet, good woman, a wise
mother of the child that was to be--that was the inglorious task which
Providence had set me to accomplish. In its proportion to the aggregat