“I don’t want to think of it. I want her myself. I have the best right to her. It was cruel to take my baby, my only one. He must let her come back to me.�
“But, my dear, that is impossible. Our little one is safe in a better world, where no harm nor evil can approach her. She is waiting for us there. Some day you can go to her, Lissa, but she may not come to you.�
“But I know she can and does. She is there in that corner of the room. Sit very still, and she will come to you. See her?�
Nathan, startled in spite of himself, would sit, awed and expectant, looking in the direction indicated, while his wife, wrapped in eager absorption, would remain motionless, becoming angry if he disturbed her.
And thus the weeks passed, bringing no relief. Lissa’s nature seemed completely changed. She no longer took interest in her household affairs, but left everything to her domestic, who at best was an indifferent housekeeper. Nathan came home each week to find neglect and chaos, where had once been care and order.
Lissa was petulant and easily irritated, and her dark, sad eyes looked as if she never slept. She lost in flesh and color and her constant and ever-recurring theme of conversation was the child she had lost.
“Ah, how far from comforting is this belief which my poor wife has embraced! If Lissa would only become reconciled to the fact that the child cannot come to her again, she would soon recover from her sorrow,� he said to Mark Cramer, as after an unusually trying hour with her he walked slowly with his brother-in-law toward the latter’s house. “It is certainly wrong to try to recall the dead.�
“I agree with you. God pity those who have no other belief than spiritism.�
“Amen!� replied Nathan. “It has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Poor Lissa keeps herself and every one around her wretched by constantly talking of her lost one. I feel at times she is losing her mind. She seems to care for nothing but what she calls ‘communing with her child.’ I can see that she is failing in health as well as mind. I hoped when the first outburst of grief was over she would, like other mothers, become resigned, but if anything she is becoming more absorbed in it. I cannot blame her friends for staying away from her. They do not want to hear the same story continually. If I propose that we go away for a time she looks alarmed and refuses to leave the house, because of the nightly visits of her little one. Surely, surely, Mark, it is a delusion. It cannot be that she does see her?� he questioned.
“I certainly believe, Nate, that she is self-deceived and that unless her mind can in some way be diverted and given other food she will die or become insane. I was surprised to-day to see the change in her, even in the short time I have been gone.�