"Oh! forgive me," he said. "I am not half good enough for you. I am not worthy of your love. You must pray for me, my darling."
For the time she was his religion: his loving, chastening, though not all-seeing deity: uplifting and purifying him, even as she was exalted and sanctified by her child.
Her sick-bed happiness was checkered by some troubles. It was hard not to stir; not to be able to help herself; not to tend the baby. When her face was washed for her by the nurse, there would be places where it was not thoroughly dried, and which she sought to wipe by rubbing against the pillow. After a few trials of this sort she forbade the nurse to touch her, and installed her husband in the duty. It was actually a comfort to him to seek to humiliate himself by these dressing-maid services; and it seemed to him that he was thereby earning forgiveness for the crime which he dared not confess. He washed her face, took her meals in, and put them out, fed her with his own hands, fanned her by the hour, and all, she thought, as no one else could.
"How gentle you are!" she said, her eyes suddenly moistening with gratitude. "How nicely you wait on me! And to think that you have led a storming party! And I have seen men afraid of you! My dear, what did you ever mean by saying that you are not good enough for me? You are a hundred times better than I deserve."
Carter laid his forehead in her gently clasping hands without speaking.
"What are you going to call him?" he asked presently.
"Why, Ravenel;—didn't you know?" she answered with a smile.
She had been calling him Ravenel to herself for several days, without telling any one of it. It was a pleasure to think that she alone knew his name; that she had so much in him of an unshared, secret possession.
"Ravenel Carter," she repeated. "We can make that into Ravvie. Don't you like it?"
"I do," he answered. "It is the best name possible. It contains the name of at least one good man."