“No,” he said, flashing out again into anger; “but—hush!—stop!—I must not,” he whispered hoarsely. “These strange fits. I cannot bear them.”
He threw back and shook his head excitedly.
“I should go mad—I should go mad.”
“Father!”
“There, I am calm again, my child. I am not myself sometimes. There—there—it is past.”
He bent over and raised her to his breast, where she laid her head, uttering a piteous sigh.
“Stricken,” he whispered; “stricken, my child. The workings of a terrible fate. Don’t reproach—don’t think ill of me, Claire. Some day the light may come—no, no,” he cried wildly; “better the darkness. I am so weak—so torn by the agony I have endured. So weak, so pitiful a man; but, with all this wretched vanity and struggle for place, my miserable heart has been so full of love for you all—for my little May.”
Claire shivered.
“No, no,” he cried excitedly. “Claire, my child, don’t speak. Hush! listen, my child. There have been cases where, in self-abnegation—the sins of others—have been borne—by the innocent—the innocent! Oh, my child, my child!”
His head dropped upon his daughter’s shoulder, and he burst into a fit of sobbing, the outpourings of a flood of anguish that he fought vainly to restrain.