"That's true," said I.
Then I reflected on the futility of converting bedchambers into
mausoleums for the living. The room shut up for a year would not
be habitable. It would be damp and inch-deep in dust.
"Mademoiselle shall sleep in my room to-night," I said, "and
Stenson can make me up a bed and put what I want here. Go and
arrange it with him."
Antoinette departed. I turned to Carlotta.
"Are you very tired, my child?"
"Oh, yes--so tired."
"Why didn't you write, so that things could have been got ready
for you?"
"I don't know. I was too unhappy. Seer "Marcous--" she said
after a little pause and then stopped.
"Yes?"
"I am going to have a baby."
She said it in the old, childlike way, oblivious of difference of
sex; with her little foreign insistence on the final consonants.
I glanced hurriedly at her. The fact was obvious. She stood
with her hands helplessly outspread. The pathos of her would
have wrung the heart of a devil.
"Thank God, you've come home," said I, huskily.
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