LUCREZIA. Spared! to be spared what was I born to have, I am a woman, and this very flesh Demands its natural pangs, its rightful throes, And I implore with vehemence these pains. I know that children wound us, and surprise Even to utter death, till we at last Turn from a face to flowers; but this my heart Was ready for these pangs, and had foreseen Oh! but I grudge the mother her last look Upon the coffined form--that pang is rich-- Envy the shivering cry when gravel falls And all these maimed wants and thwarted thoughts, Eternal yearning, answered by the wind, Have dried in me belief and love and fear. I am become a danger and a menace, A wandering fire, a disappointed force, A peril--do you hear, Giovanni? Oh, It is such souls as mine that go to swell The childless cavern cry of the barren sea, Or make that human ending to night wind. In Mrs. Charles Herne, this feeling was not quite as strong as that expressed in the play, but after they had been married two years, she did some quiet thinking in that line. She would sit alone at times, and let her imagination be active in the thought, what delight it would give her if when her husband came in the room where she was, she could take him over to a little crib and turn back the corner of a fancy worked cover and show him such a sweet, wee, little face nestled on the pillow, and what joy it would give her, when her husband came in from his work to put a little one into his arms and see how delighted he would be to take the child, and then see him sit down and hear him use language which belongs to baby talk. Again she thought what pleasure it would give her to start a little toddling form down the pathway to meet her husband, and to see the little one stand still when it met its father, and raise its little arms to be taken up. All these thoughts and many more passed through the mind of Mrs. Herne, for she now knew for a certainty that such joys would be hers, and many a pleasant laugh and joke she and her husband had over the coming of a little tot.