She
couldn't go away so soon from the spot where Alan was laid,--from
all that remained to her now of Alan. Except his unborn baby,--
the baby that was half his, half hers,--the baby predestined to
regenerate humanity. Oh, how she longed to fondle it! Every
arrangement had been made in Perugia for the baby's advent; she
would stand by those arrangements still, in her shuttered room,
partly because she couldn't tear herself away from Alan's grave;
partly because she had no heart left to make the necessary
arrangements elsewhere; but partly also because she wished Alan's
baby to be born near Alan's side, where she could present it after
birth at its father's last resting-place. It was a fanciful wish,
she knew, based upon ideas she had long since discarded; but these
ancestral sentiments echo long in our hearts; they die hard with us
all, and most hard with women.
She would stop on at Perugia, and die in giving birth to Alan's
baby; or else live to be father and mother in one to it.
So she stopped and waited; waited in tremulous fear, half longing
for death, half eager not to leave that sacred baby an orphan.
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