"Will you take him—voice and soul?"
"I will take him," said the curate, "soul and voice."
She began at once to practice upon the boy's love for her—this skillfully, persistently: without pity for herself or him. She sighed, wept, sat gloomy for hours together: nor would she explain her sorrow, but relentlessly left it to deal with his imagination, by which it was magnified and touched with the horror of mystery. It was not hard—thus to feign sadness, terror, despair: to hint misfortune, parting, unalterable love. Nor could the boy withstand it; by this depression he was soon reduced to a condition of apprehension and grief wherein self-sacrifice was at one with joyful opportunity. Dark days, these—hours of agony, premonition, fearful expectation. And when they had sufficiently wrought upon him, she was ready to proceed.
One night she took him in her lap, in the old close way, in which he loved to be held, and sat rocking, for a time, silently.
"Let us talk, dear," she said.
"I think I'm too sick," he sighed. "I just want to lie here—and not talk."
He had but expressed her own desire—to have him lie there: not to talk, but just to feel him lying in her arms.
"We must," she said.
Something in her voice—something distinguishable from the recent days as deep and real—aroused the boy. He touched the lashes of her eyes—and found them wet.
"Why are you crying?" he asked. "Oh, tell me, mother! Tell me now!"