"Nothing?" and the girl laughed from pure happiness. "It is nothing less than life."
"You will take it for me?"
"Take it for you!" Then, as the baby stirred and laid a fat little objectless hand on her breast: "You are the Capsina," she said, "and a great lady. They tell me you have taken three Turkish ships. Oh, that is a fine thing, but I would not change places with you."
Sophia rose from her seat, and walked up and down the room.
"You loved your husband?" she said, at length. "Was that why you loved your baby, and why you love this baby?"
"I don't know. How should I know?"
Sophia stopped in her walk.
"And I love the baby, too," she said, "and I know not how or why. Perhaps only because it was so little and helpless, for, indeed, I do not like children. I don't want to leave it here. Yet I must, I suppose. Will you promise to keep it very safe for me? Call it Sophia, that is my name; and, indeed, it has a wise little face. I must go. Perhaps I shall call here again in a few weeks. Let me kiss it. So—I leave money with you, and will arrange for you to be supplied with more."
She turned to the door, but before she was well out of the house she came back again and looked at the baby once more.
"Yes, it is very curious," she said, "that I should care for it at all. Well, good-bye."