come back, mother, don't grieve, he'll come back to you."
If only Rosa with her innocent lips would beseech the Almighty to give
him back to her.

"Pray, my child," stammered Mrs. Tiralla, as she pressed her daughter's
folded hands between her own. "Pray. Let us pray together."

A convulsive movement passed over Rosa's pure face. It looked as though
she were going to thrust her mother away. But the struggle only lasted
a moment. Fixing her eyes on a crucifix that she had hung over her bed,
she said with shining eyes, "What shall I say?" just as she had spoken
as a child, when her mother, tortured and full of hate, had knelt in
the evenings at her bedside and wakened her with her tears and sighs.

[Pg 292]

"Pray, pray."

But Rosa's voice had lost its childish cadence; the clear, silvery ring
had gone, and there was something austere and coolly calm in it now.
"What do you wish me to say?"

"Oh, you know," groaned her mother. "Pray for him--oh, my fear, my
fear. Pray that he may return to me. Child, my child, pray for me."

Freeing herself from her mother's clinging hands Rosa began to repeat
the _Salve Regina_. "Hail, Queen, Mother of mercy. Thou our life, our
sweetness, our hope, hail!" Her voice gradually rose and lost more and
more of its cool austerity, as though she were intoxicating herself
with the sweet beauty of the words, until it became warm and soft and
melting as she said, "To Thee we call, to Thee we sigh, as we grieve
and weep in this vale of tears." And then passing from the Salve to
another prayer, she raised her voice in fervent supplication until it
almost became a cry, "Be gracious to him! Spare him! Deliver him from
all evil, from all sin!"

"Be gracious to him--spare him--deliver him!" repeated her mother
mechanically. She did not know what she was praying, she did not
understand that the words her daughter had been repeating were from the
litany for a departing soul.

"We, poor sinners, pray Thee to hear us." The mother and daughter
mingled their voices in fervent prayer, whilst the words, "Martin,
Martin, what has become of you?" echoed in their hearts and rose like a
twofold cry from the narrow little room that was gradually growing
darker and darker.

"Stop, stop!" The woman sobbed aloud, she could not pray any longer.
She threw her arms round her daughter's neck and wept. "Rosa, Rosa,
he's [Pg 293] not coming back. Rosa, darling,"--she pressed wild kisses
on her daughter's face th