Recent as are those sleepless days and nights, their memory is all confused.  The light burning dimly in the familiar chamber which I had once sealed up as a tomb; the shadows on the wall; the fevered face and great hollow eyes of Carlotta against the pillows; her little hand clutching mine in desperation; the soft tread of the nurse, that is all I remember.  And when she recovered her wits and grew sane, although for a long time she spoke little, and scarcely noticed me otherwise, she claimed me by her side.  She was still dazed by the misery of her darkness.  It was only then that I realised the part the child had played in her development.  Her nature had been stirred to the quick; the capacity for emotion had been awakened.  She had left me without a qualm.  She had given herself to Pasquale without a glimmer of passion.  She had returned to me like a wounded animal seeking its home.  For the child alone the passionate human love had sprung flaming from the seed hidden in her soul.  And now the child was dead, and the sun had gone from her sky, and she was benumbed with the icy blackness of the world.

Then came a time when her speech was loosened and she talked to me incessantly of the child, until one day she spoke of it as living and clamoured for it, and relapsed into her fever.

At last one morning she awakened from a sound sleep and found me watching; for I had relieved the nurse at six o’clock.  She smiled at me for the first time since the child fell sick, and took my hand and kissed it.

“It is like waking into heaven to see your face, Seer Marcous, darling,” she whispered.

“I hope heaven is peopled by a better-looking set of fellows,” I said.

“Hou!” laughed Carlotta.  “Don’t you know you are beautiful?”

“You mustn’t throw an old jest in my teeth, Carlotta,” said I, and I reminded her how she had once screamed with laughter when I had told her I was very beautiful.

Carlotta listened patiently until I had ended, and then she said, with a little sigh: 

“You cannot understand, Seer Marcous, darling.  I have been thinking of my little baby and the angels—­and all the angels are like you.”

To cover the embarrassment my modesty underwent, I laughed and drew the picture of myself with long flaxen hair and white wings.

“My angels hadn’t got wings,” said Carlotta, seriously.  “They all wore dressing-gowns.  They were real angels.  And the one that was most like you brought my baby in his arms for me to kiss; and when he put it on a white cloud to sleep, and took me up in his arms instead and carried me away, away, away through the air, I didn’t cry at leaving baby.  Wasn’t that funny?  I snuggled up close to him—­like that”—­she illustrated the action of “snuggling” beneath the bed-clothes—­“and it was so comfy.”

The pale sunshine of a fine February morning filtered into the room from behind the curtains.  I turned off the dimmed electric lamp and let full daylight into the room.