“Oh, my dear Maurice, don’t cross-examine me as you did that wretched girl! It did strike me, of course.”
“Then why didn’t you tell us? I can’t understand why you should have kept back a fact like that.”
“No, I suppose you could not understand. The reason is not one that would enter a man’s mind, very likely. Oh, Maurice, does it really want explaining? Zoe has her child, and I have lost mine; isn’t that enough?”
“But she has not got hers—that’s just the trouble.”
“No, but she has had him, and I—I thought, ‘Why should she not know for a little what I have to bear always?’”
“But, Eirene—Zoe has never done you any harm, has always been the kindest of sisters to you.”
“I told you you would not understand. You can go and play with Harold, and talk of adopting Janni. I can’t forget my own child.”
“Forget him—do you imagine I ever forget him? Eirene, why will you always behave as if the loss was yours alone? God knows it was bad enough for you, and I have tried never to make it worse by any word of mine. But you can’t think anything will ever make up to me for Con.”
“It is different with you. You only think of him as the child you played with, but to me he was the hope of the future, the heir of the Empire, before whom that upstart Romanos would fall headlong. I should have been content for your life and mine to be uneventful, even unsuccessful, if it had meant that he would one day wear the diadem in Hagion Pneuma. But now—what do you think it means to me to go through this farce of empire-building in a country town, visiting hospitals and schools and being gracious to a set of schismatics, with the knowledge that even when Romanos is expelled, no child of yours and mine will take his place? But you don’t see it. I tell you, that girl Kalliopé would understand what I feel better than you do!”
“Ah, poor wretched girl!” said Maurice thoughtfully. “We must see that the letter we were discussing last night is sent to Romanos, to say that his son is probably here.”