“Master Tioka cannot go to sleep. He says you have forgotten to bid him good-night.”
I put down my rifle and follow the straight small figure of Elise Perrier through the garden. I hasten after her into the house and upstairs to the nursery.
Little Tania is already fast asleep, with scarlet lips parted and silken hair scattered on her pillow. But Tioka is sitting up in his cot awaiting me. His bright soft eyes wander over my face, my hair, my dress; his innocent gaze seems to pierce me like a fiery sword. He holds out his arms to me and I hide my flushed face on his childish breast.
“Good-night, mother dear,” he whispers, kissing me and patting my face with his small hand. Then he adds, with a funny little sniff at my cheeks and hair: “You smell of many things—of perfume and powder and cigarettes and wine....”
This sequence of gay words on the childish lips strikes at my heart like so many daggers.
“Hush, darling,” I whisper, taking refuge in those frail arms as in a haven of safety. “Forgive—forgive your mother.”
But he does not know what there is to forgive; and he laughs and yawns and then nestles down in his pillow, still holding tightly to my hand.
“Must you go away?” he sighs, in a sleepy, endearing voice.
“No, darling, no. I will stay with you.”
“Then tell me the poetry about the Virgin Mary coming down to see us in the night.”