John Baird stood looking down at the heavenly, tender little face.
There was a rather long silence. During its passing he was far away. He was still far away when at length an exclamation left his lips. He did not hear his words himself—he did not remember Latimer, or notice his quick movement of surprise.
“How sweet she was!” he broke forth. “How sweet she was! How sweet!”
He put his hand up and touched his forehead with the action of a man in a dream.
“Sometimes,” he said, low and passionately, “sometimes I am sick with longing for her—sick!”
“You!” Latimer exclaimed. “You are heart-sick for her!”
Baird came back. The startled sound in the voice awoke him. He felt himself, as it were, dragged back from another world, breathless, as by a giant’s hand. He looked up, dazed, the hand holding the daguerrotype dropping helplessly by his side.
“It is not so strange that it should come to that,” he said. “I seem to know her so well. I think,” there was a look of sharp pain on his face—“I think I know the pitiful childlike suffering her dying eyes held.” And the man actually shuddered a little.
“I know it—I know it!” Latimer cried, and he let his forehead drop upon his hands and sat staring at the carpet.
“I have heard and thought of her until she has become a living creature,” John Baird said. “I hear of her from others than yourself. Miss Starkweather—that poor girl from the mills, Susan Chapman—you yourself—keep her before me, alive. I seem to know the very deeps of her lovingness—and understand her. Oh, that she should have died!” He turned his face away and spoke his next words slowly and in a lowered voice. “If I had found her when I came back free—if I had found her here, living—we two might have been brothers.”