Beside the bed, the baby lay in its little crib, the restless fists lying upon its breast, a fine moisture shining like dew upon the infantile face. He stood looking at it, a thrill shooting into his heart. For the first time he realized with acuteness a positive feeling for the child—realized that it was his as well as Mariana's, that it had a claim upon him other than the claim of Mariana, that he was not only the husband of a woman, but the father of a child.
Bending over the crib, he touched with one finger the crumpled rose-leaf hands, with the soft indentation around the wrist as if left by a tightly drawn cord.
He smiled slightly. Then he crossed over and kissed Mariana. She opened her eyes, yawned, stretched her arms above her head, and rose.
"I have really been asleep," she said.
"You were so tired," answered Algarcife, and his voice was limpid with tenderness. "It kills me that you should work so, Mariana."
Mariana rested against him for an instant. Then she went to the crib, and, raising the baby's head, smoothed its pillow. As she laid it down again she pressed the cover carefully over its arms; then, throwing herself into bed, she fell asleep with a sigh.
CHAPTER XVII
With the closing session, Algarcife lost his position at the Bodley College. He had published, for a mere pittance, a series of articles upon the origin of sex, and, as a result, he was requested to deliver his resignation to the principal of the institution. A man holding such views, it was argued, was an unsuitable instructor for sixty-one young women. So the instructorship was transferred to a divinity student who was casually looking into science, and Algarcife was dismissed.
Upon receiving his dismissal, he descended into the street and walked slowly homeward. His first sensation was one of anger—blind anger against the blindness of the universe. It seemed incredible that a premium should be set upon commonplaceness, that modern civilization should demand of a man that he shape his mind by an artificial process after the minds of semi-savage ancestors. Was thought to be forever prostrate beneath the feet of superstition? Was all boldness of inquiry, all mental advancement along other than given lines, to be branded in the nineteenth century by the odium theologicum as it had been branded in the time of Bruno?
Then there followed a wave of personal bitterness which in its turn was succeeded by a flood-tide of indifference.