The girl pauses, and the great tears rise to her eyes. Speranza raises herself suddenly, and, confronting the child, lays both hands upon her shoulders.
“Until what, child?”
“Until I’ve won, mother,” cries Gloria, as she raises her glorious eyes, in which the tears still tremble, to her mother’s face.
“Ah, Gloria! the odds are against you, my darling.”
“Don’t I know that, mother; don’t I know that well? But I am not afraid. I made a vow, mother, to-day, I made it to those waves; and something tells me that I shall keep that vow and win, though in doing so I may die.”
“Hush, Gloria, hush, child; don’t talk like that.”
“And don’t you want me to win, mother? After all you have suffered, after all you have taught me, would you have your child turn back from the path she has set herself to follow, because perhaps at that path’s end lies death?”
“Child, it is a cause I would gladly lay down my life for, but how can I bring myself to wish you to sacrifice yourself?”
“What is sacrifice in a great cause, mother? I fear no sacrifice, no pain, no consequence, so long as victory crowns me in the end.”
The mother’s arms are round her child’s neck now, her head is bending down and the bright gold of Speranza’s lovely hair is close beside the glossy, wandering dark gold curls of Gloria. In the heart of the former a new-born hope is rising, vague, undefinable, yet still there, and which fills it with a happiness she has not known for many and many a day.