seat of the hired brougham, and on it was a bunch of white
flowers given by Antoinette. In the cemetery chapel another fragment of
humanity awaited sepulture, and the funeral service was read over both
bodies. I stood alone by the little white coffin. A crowd of mourners
were grouped beside the black one. I glanced at the inscription as
I passed: "Jane Elliot, in the eighty-sixth year of her age." The
officiant referred in the service to "our dear brother and sister, here
departed." It was either an awful jest or an awful verity.

My "quaintly fathered little son" had small need of my help through the
troubles of his life. His mother needed all that I could give. Without
me she would have died. That I verily believe. I was her solitary
plank in the welter wherein she would have been submerged. She clung to
me--literally clung to me. I sat for hours with her grasp upon me. To
feel assured of my physical presence alone seemed to bring her calm.

Recent as are those sleepless days and nights, their memory is all
confused. The light burning dimly in the familiar chamber which I had
once sealed up as a tomb; the shadows on the wall; the fevered face
and great hollow eyes of Carlotta against the pillows; her little hand
clutching mine in desperation; the soft tread of the nurse, that is all
I remember. And when she recovered her wits and grew sane, although for
a long time she spoke little, and scarcely noticed me otherwise,
she claimed me by her side. She was still dazed by the misery of her
darkness. It was only then that I realised the part the child had
played in her development. Her nature had been stirred to the quick; the
capacity for emotion had been awakened. She had left me without a qualm.
She had given herself to Pasquale without a glimmer of passion. She had
returned to me like a wounded animal seeking its home. For the child
alone the passionate human love had sprung flaming from the seed hidden
in her soul. And now the child was dead, and the sun had gone from her
sky, and she was benumbed with the icy blackness of the world.

Then came a time when her speech was loosened and she talked to me
incessantly of the child, until one day she spoke of it as living and
clamoured for it, and relapsed into her fever.

At last one morning she awakened from a sound sleep and found me
watching; for I had relieved the nurse at six o'clock. She smiled at
me for the first time since the child fell sick, and took my hand and