I used to talk to her about him, pouring all my sentimental secrets into her ears, just as if she understood, telling her what a great man her father had been and how he loved both of us—would have done if he had lived longer.
I dare say it was very foolish. Yet I cannot think it was all foolishness. Many and many a time since I have wondered if the holy saints, who knew what had really happened to Martin, were whispering all this in my ear as a means of keeping my love for him as much alive as if he had been constantly by my side.
The climax came when Isabel was about five months old, for then the feeling about baby and Martin reached another and higher phase.
I hardly dare to speak of it, lest it should seem silly when it was really so sacred and so exalted.
The idea I had had before baby was born, that she was being sent to console me (to be a link between my lost one and me), developed into the startling and rapturous thought that the very soul of Martin had passed into my child.
"So Martin is not dead at all," I thought, "not really dead, because he lives in baby."
It is impossible to say how this thought stirred me; how it filled my heart with thankfulness; how I prayed that the little body in which the soul of my Martin had come to dwell might grow beautiful and strong and worthy of him; how I felt charged with another and still greater responsibility to guard and protect her with my life itself if need be.
"Yes, yes, my very life itself," I thought.
Perhaps this was a sort of delirium, born of my great love, my hard work, and my failing strength. I did not know, I did not care.
All that mattered to me then was one thing only—that whereas hitherto I had thought Martin was so far gone from me that not Time but only Eternity would bring us together, now I felt that he was coming back and back to me—nearer and nearer and nearer every day.