She drew herself up superbly.

“It is my child—­my very, very own,” cried Carlotta.  “It is mine, mine—­and I shall not allow any one to touch it—­” and then her face softened—­“except Seer Marcous.”

CHAPTER XXIII

Behold Carlotta again installed in my house which she regarded as her home.  Heaven forbid that I should sow any doubt thereof in her mind.

I had learned perhaps one lesson:  the meaning of love.  The love that is desire alone, though sung in all romance of all the ages, is of the brute nature and is doomed to perish.  The love that pardons, endures through wrong, contents itself in abnegation, is of the imperishable things that draw weak man a little nearer to the angels.  When Carlotta wept upon my shoulder during those few first moments of her return I knew that all resentment was gone from my heart, that it would have been a poor, ignoble thing.  Had she come back to me leprous of body and abominable of spirit, it would not have mattered.  I would have forgiven her, loved her, cherished her just the same.  It was a question, not of reason, not of human pity, not of quixotism; not of any argument or sentiment for which I could be responsible.  I was helpless, obeying a reflex action of the soul.

The days passed tranquilly.  In spite of pain I felt an odd happiness.  I had nothing selfishly to hope for.  Perhaps I had aged five years in one, and I viewed life differently.  It was enough for me that she had come home, to the haven where no harm could befall her.  She was my appointed task, even as her husband was Judith’s.  I recognised in myself the man with the one talent.  The deep wisdom of the parable can be taken to inmost heart for comfort only by men of little destinies.  With infinite love and patience to mould Carlotta into a sweet, good woman, a wise mother of the child that was to be—­that was the inglorious task which Providence had set me to accomplish.  In its proportion to the aggregate of human effort it was infinitesimal.  But who shall say that it was not worth the doing?  Save writing a useless book, in what other sphere of sublunar energy could I have been effectual?  I did not thus analyse my attitude at the time; the man who does so is a poser, a mime to his own audience; but looking back, I think I was guided by some such unformulated considerations.

Although my hermit mania was in itself radically cured, yet I altered nothing in my relations with the outside world.  I wrote to Judith a brief account of what had occurred and received from her a sympathetic answer.  My reading among the Mystics and Thaumaturgists put me on the track of Arabic.  I found that Carlotta knew enough of the language to give me elementary instruction, and thus the whirligig of time brought in its revenge by constituting me her pupil, to our joint edification.