The baby gave a piercing yell.

“Oh, do take care!” begged Miss Abbott.  “You are squeezing it.”

“It is nothing.  If he cries silently then you may be frightened.  He thinks I am going to wash him, and he is quite right.”

“Wash him!” she cried.  “You?  Here?” The homely piece of news seemed to shatter all her plans.  She had spent a long half-hour in elaborate approaches, in high moral attacks; she had neither frightened her enemy nor made him angry, nor interfered with the least detail of his domestic life.

“I had gone to the Farmacia,” he continued, “and was sitting there comfortably, when suddenly I remembered that Perfetta had heated water an hour ago—­over there, look, covered with a cushion.  I came away at once, for really he must be washed.  You must excuse me.  I can put it off no longer.”

“I have wasted your time,” she said feebly.

He walked sternly to the loggia and drew from it a large earthenware bowl.  It was dirty inside; he dusted it with a tablecloth.  Then he fetched the hot water, which was in a copper pot.  He poured it out.  He added cold.  He felt in his pocket and brought out a piece of soap.  Then he took up the baby, and, holding his cigar between his teeth, began to unwrap it.  Miss Abbott turned to go.

“But why are you going?  Excuse me if I wash him while we talk.”

“I have nothing more to say,” said Miss Abbott.  All she could do now was to find Philip, confess her miserable defeat, and bid him go in her stead and prosper better.  She cursed her feebleness; she longed to expose it, without apologies or tears.

“Oh, but stop a moment!” he cried.  “You have not seen him yet.”

“I have seen as much as I want, thank you.”

The last wrapping slid off.  He held out to her in his two hands a little kicking image of bronze.

“Take him!”

She would not touch the child.

“I must go at once,” she cried; for the tears—­the wrong tears—­were hurrying to her eyes.

“Who would have believed his mother was blonde?  For he is brown all over—­brown every inch of him.  Ah, but how beautiful he is!  And he is mine; mine for ever.  Even if he hates me he will be mine.  He cannot help it; he is made out of me; I am his father.”

It was too late to go.  She could not tell why, but it was too late.  She turned away her head when Gino lifted his son to his lips.  This was something too remote from the prettiness of the nursery.  The man was majestic; he was a part of Nature; in no ordinary love scene could he ever be so great.  For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and—­by some sad, strange irony—­it does not bind us children to our parents.  For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy.  Gino passionately embracing, Miss Abbott reverently averting her eyes—­both of them had parents whom they did not love so very much.