He rose, thrust the diary into his pocket and went into the house, ascending the stair to a small room at the end of the hall. The door was ajar and a dim light showed within. He listened, then pushed the door wider and entered. A white nursery bed stood in one corner, and Gordon noiselessly placed a chair beside it and sat down, his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, looking at the little face against the pillow, the tiny fist lying on the coverlid.
Gazing, his deeply carved lips moulded softly, a sense of the overwhelming miracle of life possessed him. This small fabric was woven of his own flesh. He saw his own curving mouth, his full chin, his brow! Some day those hands would cling to his, those lips would frame the word “father.” What of life’s pitfalls, of its tragedies, awaited this new being he had brought into the world?
He sighed, and as if in answer, the baby sighed too. The sound smote him strangely. Was there some occult sympathy between them? Her birthright was not only of flesh, but of spirit. Had she also share in his isolated heart, his wayward impulses, his passionate pride?
“ADA! MY ONE SWEET DAUGHTER!” p. [103].
At length he took out the diary and opening it on his knee, began to write—lines whose feeling swelled from some great wave of tenderness:
“Ada! my one sweet daughter! If a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Whate’er of earth divide us I shall claim
Not tears, but tenderness to answer mine: