The candle had burned out: it must be
late. The baby was on her lap--still, very still. One faint gleam
of satisfaction crossed her "during dark" at the thought that he
slept so peacefully, hidden from the gloom which, somehow,
appeared to be all the same gloom outside and inside of her. In
that gloom she sat alone.
Suddenly a prayer was in her heart. It was moving there as of
itself. It had come there by no calling of it thither, by no
conscious will of hers. "O God," she cried, "I am desolate!--Is
there no help for me?" And therewith she knew that she had
prayed, and knew that never in her life had she prayed before.
She started to her feet in an agony: a horrible fear had taken
possession of her. With one arm she held the child fast to her
bosom, with the other hand searched in vain to find a match. And
still, as she searched, the baby seemed to grow heavier upon her
arm, and the fear sickened more and more at her heart.
At last she had light! and the face of the child came out of the
darkness. But the child himself had gone away into it. The
Unspeakable had come while she slept--had come and gone, and
taken her child with him. What was left of him was no more good
to kiss than the last doll of her childhood!
When Tom came home, there was his wife on the floor as if dead,
and a little way from her the child, dead indeed, and cold with
death.
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