"Come now, Ragna, calm yourself. You can't go to them like this, you would excite them and do them harm; you must not!"
"Ah, but you don't know how nearly I—" she exclaimed, and wrenching her arm free sped up the stairs and into the nursery where she flung herself between the cots, sobbing convulsively.
Ferrati stood on the stair gazing after her a moment, then followed her slowly. He looked in through the nursery door and saw her, one arm across either cot, her face hidden, her shoulders shaking with sobs, her hat awry, and Mimmo patting her neck and stray locks of hair with his little bandaged hand, while Beppino on the other side, cuddled close to her protecting arm.
Carolina with fine intuition made a sign to Assunta, and they withdrew noiselessly, leaving their mistress alone with her children.
"We knowed 'oo would come," said Beppino contentedly.
A great wave of emotion had Ragna on its crest, carrying her on, unresisting. She felt dominant within her the powerful impulse of renunciation, it overwhelmed all else. Words Ferrati had spoken to her in Venice, long ago, rang in her ears. "Remember that you are not only a woman, you are a mother, your duty is towards your child, you have no right to cheat him of what should be his!" For the first time she actually realised that Beppino too was her child, bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh as was Mimmo. Hitherto she had always looked on him as altogether his father's, as remote from her personally, and her hatred of the father had been continued in indifference towards the child. Now as she felt the helpless little body lying close within her arm, as she heard the soft little voice lisp out words of confidence, her innermost being stirred at recognition of his oneness with her. But to renounce happiness, to renounce Angelescu! The dark waters of despair engulfed her, she sank down and down—it had been bad enough before, but what would be the torment of life now, without him? How could she give him up, just as she had found him? Her entire being, body and spirit, recoiled from the thought of re-entering that prison from which she had so lately thought to escape forever. For one wild moment the impulse seized her to wrap up the children and carry them off with her. Her fingers twitched feverishly at the bed-clothes. Then the recollection came to her of how Angelescu had involuntarily recoiled at mention of the children. He had not meant her to see it, she knew that, she knew also that he would be unfailingly kind and considerate—but at what cost to himself, to their love? Would she not be preparing a worse torment for both of them? A pale dawn broke on the night of her thoughts; she saw herself no longer as an individual, as a personality warring against circumstance, rebellious towards fate, but rather as an integral part of Fate, a particle of elementary force given in the service of these young lives for their guidance and protection. She saw her task as a mother as she had not yet understood it and in the light of the new vision stood prepared to strip herself of all selfish attributes, of pride and the desire for happiness. Yet she saw it without exaltation, her sacrifice stood in the cold light of the commonplace, a natural sequence of her enlarged understanding. The chill weight of the years before her settled down on her shoulders, but she accepted that weight, bent her neck consciously and consentingly to the unwelcome yoke. Unwelcome it would be, but no longer galling as in the past, she knew in her soul that in the instant of her renunciation, she had passed beyond Egidio's power to hurt her,—at least more than superficially, he had shrunk to insignificance. Never again would she be afraid of him, or stirred to anger on her own account by his vulgar insults.
Mimmo broke in upon her train of thought, she heard his sweet voice in her ear:
"Mammina you have come back to us, you will never leave us again? Di! mammina, mai più?"
She raised her head and kissing him, answered smiling:
"No, cuoricino mio, mai più."