The night lamp behind them threw a halo around the mother
and her child, and the great trinity of all times and all faiths
gleamed immortal upon the canvas of the simple room--its only
spectator a child.
In her, malleable to all the influences of the revealing night,
fairly disembodied, in her detached and flitting presence, the scene
woke dim, coiled memories of an infancy that stirred and pained her
even as it left her forever, and frightened longing for the
motherhood that life was holding for her. No longer an infant, not
yet a woman, this creature that was both felt the helplessness of
one, the yearning of the other, and as she pressed the nestling cat
tightly to her little breast two great, eager tears slipped down her
hot cheeks, and a gulping sob, half loneliness, half pure
excitement, broke into the gentle stillness of the lighted room.
"Who's there?"
The man's voice rang like a sudden pistol shot in the night; before
Caroline's fascinated gaze the gleaming, softly colored picture
faded and vanished into the engulfing darkness, as the lamp went out
and a dark, scudding mackerel cloud flew over the moon.
Instinctively she fled softly down the knoll, instinctively she
dropped behind a bush at the bottom.
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