“What do you know about my heart, Paytor?” Julie said, angrily. “You don’t know what you are talking about at all. The child——”
“Well, yes——?”
“Her name is Ann,” she finished sulkily.
“It’s a sweet name—it was your mother’s, too. Whose is she?”
“Oh, good heavens!” Julie cried, moving around the room. “Mine, mine, mine, of course, whose would she be if not mine?”
He looked at her. “Yours—why, Julie—how absurd!” Slowly the colour left his face.
“I know—we have got to talk it over—it’s all got to be arranged, it’s terrible. But she is nice, a bright child, a good child.”
“What in the world is all this about?” he demanded, stopping in front of her. “What are you in this mood for—what have I done?”
“Good heavens! What have you done? What a ridiculous man you are. Why nothing, of course, absolutely nothing!” She waved her arm. “That’s not it—why do you bring yourself in? I’m not blaming you, I’m not asking to be forgiven. I’ve been down on my knees, I’ve beaten my head on the ground, abased myself, but,” she said in a terrible voice, “it is not low enough, the ground is not low enough, to bend is not enough; to ask forgiveness is not enough, to receive it is nothing. There isn’t the right kind of misery in the world for me to suffer, nor the right kind of pity for you to feel, there isn’t the right word in the world to heal me up. It’s good to forgive, to be forgiven, but that’s for ordinary things. This is beyond that—it’s something you can experience but never feel—there are not enough nerves, blood cells, flesh—to feel it. You suffer insufficiently; it’s like drinking insufficiently, sleeping insufficiently. I’m not asking anything because there is nothing that I can receive—how primitive to be able to receive——”
“But, Julie——”