“Is he dead?”
My mind flew back to an evening long ago—long, long ago it seemed—when another newspaper had told of another death, and my ears caught the echo of the identical question that had then fallen from her lips. I dreaded lest she should say again, “I am so glad.”
I beckoned her to my side, and pointing with my finger to the name watched her face anxiously. She read, stared for a bit in front of her and turned to me with a piteous look. I drew her to me, and she laid her face against my shoulder.
“I don’t know why I’m crying, Seer Marcous, dear,” she said, after a while.
I made her drink some of my tea, but she would eat nothing, and presently she went upstairs. She had not said that she was glad. She had wept and not known the reason for her tears. I railed at myself for my doubts of her.
She was subdued and thoughtful all the day. In the evening, instead of curling herself up in the sofa-corner among the cushions, she sat on a stool by my feet as I read, one hand supporting her chin, the other resting on my knee.
“I am glad he was a brave man,” she said at last, alluding to Pasquale for the first time since the morning. “I like brave men.”
“Dulce et decorum est. He died for his country,” said I.
“It does not hurt me now so much to think of him,” said Carlotta.
I could not help feeling a miserable pang of jealousy at Pasquale’s posthumous rehabilitation as a hero in Carlotta’s heart. Yet, was it not natural? Was it not the way of women? I saw myself far remote from her, and though she never spoke of him again I divined that her thoughts dwelt not untenderly on his memory. I was absurd, I know. But I had begun almost to believe in my make-believe paternity, and I was jealous of the rightful claims of the dead man.