The old man turned his head aside.
"You wanted a son so much, you know."
Fatimah, who had been sitting out of sight, now stepped into the boys' room and closed the door noiselessly behind her, leaving the two old people alone together with the sanctities of their married life, on which no other eye should look.
"I thought at first that God was not going to give me any children, but when my child came, and it was a boy, how happy we both were!"
The old man closed his eyes still more tightly and stiffened his iron lip.
"Foolish people used to think in those days that you didn't love our little one because you couldn't pay much heed to him. But Fatimah was telling me only to-night that you never went to bed without going into her room to see if it was well with our child."
The tears were now forcing themselves through the old man's eyelids.
"And when our dear boy had the fever, and he was so ill that we had to shave his little head, you never went to bed at all—not until the crisis came, and then—don't you remember?—just when we thought the wings of death were over us, he opened his beautiful blue eyes and smiled. I think that was the happiest moment of all our lives, dear."
She was on her husband's side at last—thinking for him—seeing everything from his point of view.
"Then all the years afterwards you worked so hard, and won such high honours and such a great name, only to leave them behind to our son, and now ... now——"