Richard Verley entered the church alone. The boy was afraid to enter. He did not know what evil spirit might be lurking in the night within the white priest’s temple. He stretched himself out on the doorstep of the church and went to sleep there.
It was very dark within now, for the moon was gone. For a moment the minister paused irresolute. Then his hand touched the side of a seat. He sat down mechanically. Suddenly he covered his face with his hands, and tried to pray, but his prayer was wordless. For how long he sat thus he could not have told. It might have been the length of half the night, for when he uncovered his eyes again things seemed changed about him. The faint glimmer of the dawn lent its first grey light. He looked about him—at the melancholy church interior, his eyes traveling slowly and painfully over the dusty pews and then upward toward the little pulpit cross where he had spoken so often. A patch of color caught his eyes and held them. He thought he dreamed and turned his glance away, but, fascinated, his eyes came back to that bit of color there at the foot of the pulpit.
He started up with a loud cry. A moment only, and he was beside her, his trembling hands touching her. Something stirred upon her back and he saw the round head of the baby. Its eyes were wide open now and looking at him with interest. Like most Japanese babies, it was a grave, mute little mite, but its eyes were large and, like his own mother’s, blue in color. He knew it for his own child, though he could not see the face of the mother who lay so very still. Some blessed instinct guided his staggering feet to the door. He aroused the sleeping Gonji, and put into his arms the child. Then he went back into the church.
She had told him in those other days, so many times, that his voice would waken her from the very sleep of death. When her eyes looked up into his face she would not close them though they ached with weariness. She even smiled at his broken repetitions of her name.
“I do not know how it is you are here,” he said, “but here you are—in my arms, my wife, and it is enough.”
Her voice was weak, but inexpressibly sweet.
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