The sun shone all day long, and though the holland window blinds were kept down to subdue the light, for my sake and perhaps for baby’s, I thought my room looked perfectly beautiful.  It might be poor and shabby, but flights of angels could not have made it more heavenly than it was in my eyes then.

In the afternoon nurse told me I must take some sleep myself, but I would not sleep until baby slept, so she had to give me my cherub again, and I sat up and rocked her and for a while I sang—­as softly as I could—­a little lullaby.

It was a lullaby I had learned at Nemi from the Italian women in embroidered outside stays, who so love their children; and though I knew quite well that it had been written for the Mother of all Mothers, who, after she had been turned away from every door, had been forced to take refuge in a stable in Bethlehem, I was in such an ecstasy of spiritual happiness that I thought it no irreverence to change it a little and to sing it in my London lodging to my human child.

     “Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee,
     Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee.”

I dare say my voice was sweet that day—­a mother’s voice is always sweet—­for when Emmerjane, who had been out of the room, came back to it with a look of awed solemnity, she said: 

“Well, I never did!  I thought as ‘ow there was a’ angel a-come into this room.”

“So there is, and here she is,” I said, beaming down on my sleeping child.

But the long, short, blissful day came to an end at last, and when night fell and I dropped asleep, there were two names of my dear ones on my lips, and if one of them was the name of him who (as I thought) was in heaven, the other was the name of her who was now lying in my arms.

I may have been poor, but I felt like a queen with all the riches of life in my little room.

I may have sinned against the world and the Church, but I felt as if God had justified me by His own triumphant law.

The whole feminine soul in me seemed to swell and throb, and with my baby at my breast I wanted no more of earth or heaven.

I was still bleeding from the bruises of Fate, but I felt healed of all my wounds, loaded with benefits, crowned with rewards.

Four days passed like this, varied by visits from the doctor and my Welsh landlady.  Then my nurse began to talk of leaving me.

I did not care.  In my ignorance of my condition, and the greed of my motherly love, I was not sorry she was going so soon.  Indeed, I was beginning to be jealous of her, and was looking forward to having my baby all to myself.

But nurse, as I remember, was a little ashamed and tried to excuse herself.

“If I hadn’t promised to nurse another lady, I wouldn’t leave you, money or no money,” she said.  “But the girl” (meaning Emmerjane) “is always here, and if she isn’t like a nurse she’s ’andy.”