I saw my son—a little black creature—and it seemed to me he looked at me with eyes of hate. He was not mine: I could not feel that he was mine. His nurse, looking from him to me, said kindly:
“He is very like you, sir—he has your forehead.”
“Yes,” breathed Judith, who stood by my side; “we have often said that, haven’t we, nurse?”
I turned to look at her, but she fluttered away to the other end of the room, and I could not see her face. So, with an effort, I bent low over the cot in which my son lay and scrutinized each feature of his face in turn. But I could see none of my blood in him. Nothing of mine was his.... The dead past had come to life. Sterling still survived....
I am sure that my manner of living at this time puzzled and distressed my friends—you, in particular. If you will carry your mind back to two years ago, you will recollect how I plunged myself into wild dissipation for a time, and how in a fit of most reticent yet hot anger I left wife and home for Persia, then India, then China. All the time I was away—until, indeed, yesterday when I returned home after my long absence—I was trying to forget. To forget my son, I mean. For a time I hated Judith. It was through her that Nature had dealt me this blow. If she had not so dearly loved Sterling, I thought, this thing could not have happened to me. But as the months went by I softened to my wife; my hatred of her broadened into a hatred of life itself.
In the letters she wrote me she never made even passing mention of our son.
Then, yesterday, I returned. Judith was expecting me. Her manner, generally so calm, was disturbed, agitated. She has grown very thin, very old.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Upstairs—in the nursery. But do not go to see him now,” she urged. “Stay with me a little while.”
And she put her arms about my neck and kissed me fondly. My flesh responded to hers. But whilst we stood locked in each other’s arms, my memory, hating me, threw up before my eyes a vivid picture of the dark little creature I left behind two years ago. I shuddered. My braced arms slackened. I turned away.