Now,
when it was too late, he had become a father indeed. And it brought some
ease to his fiercely tortured heart to notice that it was his
ministrations that the dying child seemed to welcome most. For the most
part she lay in a semi-conscious state, heeding nothing, and only
moaning now and again, a sad little moan, like an injured bird. She
seemed to say she was so little a thing to suffer so. Once, however,
when Antony had just placed some fresh ice around her head, she opened
her eyes and said, "Dear little Daddy," and the light on Antony's
face--poor victim of perverse instincts that too often drew his really
fine nature awry--was sanctifying to see.
As terrible was the look of torture that came over his face, one night
near the end, when Wonder in a sudden nightmare of delirium had seized
his hand and cried:--
"O Daddy, the white lady! See her there at the end of the bed. She is
smiling, Daddy--" Then lower, "You will not make me kiss her any more,
will you, Daddy?"--
Beatrice had gone to snatch an hour or two's sleep, so she never heard
this, and it was no mere cowardly consolation for Antony to think
afterwards that no one but he and his little child had known of that
fatal afternoon in the wood.
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