“My love!” he would say, “my dearest Lilia! Be calm. I have never loved any one but you.”
She, knowing everything, would only smile gently, too broken by suffering to make sarcastic repartees.
Before the child was born he gave her a kiss, and said, “I have prayed all night for a boy.”
Some strangely tender impulse moved her, and she said faintly, “You are a boy yourself, Gino.”
He answered, “Then we shall be brothers.”
He lay outside the room with his head against the door like a dog. When they came to tell him the glad news they found him half unconscious, and his face was wet with tears.
As for Lilia, some one said to her, “It is a beautiful boy!” But she had died in giving birth to him.
Chapter 5
At the time of Lilia’s death Philip Herriton was just twenty-four years of age—indeed the news reached Sawston on his birthday. He was a tall, weakly-built young man, whose clothes had to be judiciously padded on the shoulders in order to make him pass muster. His face was plain rather than not, and there was a curious mixture in it of good and bad. He had a fine forehead and a good large nose, and both observation and sympathy were in his eyes. But below the nose and eyes all was confusion, and those people who believe that destiny resides in the mouth and chin shook their heads when they looked at him.