The Call of the Blood - Page 221/317

"What is it?" she said, as they stood together. "You look----"

He had become pale. He knew it.

"Hermione!" he said.

He was actually panting as if he had been running. He moved a few steps

towards the edge of the summit. She followed him.

"You are angry that I didn't tell you! But--I wanted to say it. I wanted

to--to----"

She lifted his hands to her lips.

"Thank you for giving me a child," she said.

Then tears came into his eyes and ran down over his cheeks. That he

should be thanked by her--that scourged the genuine good in him till

surely blood started under the strokes.

"Don't thank me!" he said. "Don't do that! I won't have it!"

His voice sounded angry.

"I won't ever let you thank me for anything," he went on. "You must

understand that."

He was on the edge of some violent, some almost hysterical outburst. He

thought of Gaspare casting himself down in the boat that morning when he

had feared that his padrone was drowned. So he longed to cast himself

down and cry. But he had the strength to check his impulse. Only, the

checking of it seemed to turn him for a moment into something made not of

flesh and blood but of iron. And this thing of iron was voiceless.

She knew that he was feeling intensely and respected his silence. But at

last it began almost to frighten her. The boyish look she loved had gone

out of his face. A stern man stood beside her, a man she had never seen

before.

"Maurice," she said, at length. "What is it? I think you are suffering."

"Yes," he said.

"But--but aren't you glad? Surely you are glad?"

To her the word seemed mean, poverty-stricken. She changed it.

"Surely you are thankful?"

"I don't know," he answered, at last. "I am thinking that I don't know

that I am worthy to be a father."

He himself had fixed a limit. Now, God was putting a period to his wild

youth. And the heart--was that changed within him?

Too much was happening. The cup was being filled too full. A great

longing came to him to get away, far away, and be alone. If it had been

any other day he would have gone off into the mountains, by himself, have

stayed out till night came, have walked, climbed, till he was exhausted.

But to-day he could not do that. And soon Artois would be coming. He felt

as if something must snap in brain or heart.