'Come for him to my room when I ring,' she said; and she stooped again and lifted the little boy in her arms.
'Are you all afraid of me, my poor children,' she murmured to him. 'Surely I have never been cruel to you?'
He did not understand; he was still frightened, but he put his arm about her throat and hid his pretty face on her shoulder with a gesture that was half terror, half confidence. She took him to her own room and soothed and caressed and amused him, till he regained his natural fearlessness and sat happy on her knee, playing with some Indian ivory toys; then he grew tired, and leaned his head against her breast, and fell asleep as prettily as a Star of Bethlehem shuts its white leaves up at sunset.
She watched him with an aching heart.
She could look on none of her children without a throb of intolerable shame. They were the symbols as they were the offspring of all her hours of love. Another woman might have forgotten all except that they were hers.
She could not.
From that day she had the younger children brought to her more often, drove them out at times, and soon regained their affection, although to them all a majesty and melancholy, as inseparable from her now as shadows from the night, made her presence inspire them with a certain awe; even Lili, the most willful of them all, in her pretty, gay, childish vanity and naughtiness, never ventured to disobey or to weary her.
'When I am with her it is as if I were at Mass,' Lili said to her brothers. 'You know what one feels when the Host comes and the bell rings, and it is all so still, and only the Latin words——'
'It is the presence of God that we feel at Mass,' said Gela, in a hushed voice. 'And I think our mother has God with her very much. Only He makes her sad.'
'But she never does cry,' said her little daughter.