But I mustn't write so much about myself. My father says you are still unmarried. He couldn't tell me whether you had carried your painting further. I was sure it would do great things for you, and it is not too late, even yet.
Another thing--I have always felt that I may have hurt your feelings past forgiveness by advising you as I did in that last letter not to trust too fully the man whom I mentioned. I now see that I had no right to go so far. You were hardly more than a child then, but you knew how to take care of yourself even with a man of the world like him, and I had no right to warn you. But I was going away, dear Dora, and I was so miserable about myself that I exaggerated your danger. I have seen by the papers that he has made a great success in life, and that old Stafford is very proud of him--
Margaret folded the letter in her lap and sat aflame with joy, staring with glowing eyes at the vacant air.
“Do you like it? Is it nice, lady?” the child asked.
“Yes, very nice, and I thank you,” she answered. The child said something, but she did not hear it. The pent-up ecstasy within her was like physical pain; she could have screamed to give it an outlet. She felt a womanly yearning to embrace the boy, and would have opened her arms to him had she not heard steps behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Kenneth Galt approaching.
“I dropped in at the front to see you,” he said, with a bow. “They told me you were out here.” His eyes fell on the child, and a strange flare of inexpressible tenderness lighted his lack-lustre eyes as he drew a chair forward and sat down.
“Yes, I like it here,” she intoned, and her voice, in her own ears, sounded far off, and as if it had taken on the timbre of a new and exalted existence. She half feared that Galt would note it.
“You seem happy,” he said, thoughtfully, “and that is a condition that is most rare with humankind. I certainly envy a happy individual.”
“Yes, I am very happy,” she said--“more so than I ever was in my life before.”
“I certainly envy you,” he repeated, gloomily. “I have given up all hope of even touching the hem of the good dame's garment.” The boy had gone to him, and stood with his little hand on his father's knee, looking with trustful adoration into the dark, saturnine face above him. Something in the child's profile, now that Margaret held the glass of revelation to her eyes, showed kinship to its paternal prototype, and a dazzling dart of conviction flashed through her. At that instant she had a motherly instinct to draw the child from the contaminating touch of the man who had disowned it. His attitude of denial was a desecration to the holiness of parenthood, and in her soul she resented it.