So she stopped on alone for her dark hour in Perugia. She stopped on, untended by any save unknown Italians whose tongue she hardly spoke, and uncheered by a friendly voice at the deepest moment of trouble in a woman’s history. Often for hours together she sat alone in the cathedral, gazing up at a certain mild-featured Madonna, enshrined above an altar. The unwedded widow seemed to gain some comfort from the pitying face of the maiden mother. Every day, while still she could, she walked out along the shadeless suburban road to Alan’s grave in the parched and crowded cemetery. Women trudging along with crammed creels on their backs turned round to stare at her. When she could no longer walk, she sat at her window towards San Luca and gazed at it. There lay the only friend she possessed in Perugia, perhaps in the universe.
The dreaded day arrived at last, and her strong constitution enabled Herminia to live through it. Her baby was born, a beautiful little girl, soft, delicate, wonderful, with Alan’s blue eyes, and its mother’s complexion. Those rosy feet saved Herminia. As she clasped them in her hands—tiny feet, tender feet—she felt she had now something left to live for—her baby, Alan’s baby, the baby with a future, the baby that was destined to regenerate humanity.
So warm! So small! Alan’s soul and her own, mysteriously blended.
Still, even so, she couldn’t find it in her heart to give any joyous name to dead Alan’s child. Dolores she called it, at Alan’s grave. In sorrow had she borne it; its true name was Dolores.
It was a changed London to which Herminia returned. She was homeless, penniless, friendless. Above all she was _déclassée_. The world that had known her now knew her no more. Women who had smothered her with their Judas kisses passed her by in their victorias with a stony stare. Even men pretended to be looking the other way, or crossed the street to avoid the necessity for recognising her. “So awkward to be mixed up with such a scandal!” She hardly knew as yet herself how much her world was changed indeed; for had she not come back to it, the mother of an illegitimate daughter? But she began to suspect it the very first day when she arrived at Charing Cross, clad in a plain black dress, with her baby at her bosom.