“‘You were crowing with glee at the lights and the great, flaring fire. Everybody in the room wanted to caress you, but I peremptorily ordered them off, and took you for a time into my own arms. At last, when the lights were turned down at my command, and the firelight hidden behind a screen, I took the violin--a rare old instrument for which your father had paid a king’s ransom--and began to play. After the prelude had been twice played, I began to sing. Never in my life had I been so overwhelmingly conscious of you--so completely unconscious of everybody else in the world. I played and sang only to my child. All other human beings were nonexistent. I played with a perfection of which I had never for a moment thought myself capable. I sang with a tenderness which I could never have commanded had I been conscious for the time of any other existence than your own. In that music my soul laid itself bare to yours and prayed for your love. I told you in every tone all that a mother love means--all that an intensely emotional woman is capable of feeling; I gave free rein to all there was in me of passion, and made all of it your own. I was in an ecstasy. I was entranced. My soul was transfigured and all was wrought into the music. “‘In the midst of it all someone whispered a cold blooded, heartlessly appreciative comment upon my playing, or the music, or my voice, or the execution, or something else--it matters not what. It was the sort of thing that people say for politeness’ sake when some screeching girl sings “Hear Me, Norma.” It wakened me instantly from my trance. It brought me back to myself. It revealed to me how completely I had been wasting the sacred things of my soul upon a company of Philistines. It filled me with a wrath that considered not consequences. I ceased to play. I seized the precious violin by its neck--worn smooth by the touch of artist hands--and dashed it to pieces over the piano. Then I snatched my baby from the cradle and retreated to your nursery, where I double locked the door, and refused to admit anybody but mammy, whose affection for you I felt, had been wounded as sorely as my own. I sent your father word that I would pass the night in the nursery, and at daylight I left home forever, taking you and mammy with me in the carriage. “‘I had taken pains to learn that your father had been summoned that night, on an emergency call, to the bedside of a patient, ten miles away. This gave me my opportunity. With you in my arms and mammy by my side, I drove to Richmond, and sending the carriage back, I drew what money there was to my credit in the bank, and took the steamer sailing that day for New York. All this was seventeen years ago, remember, when there were no railroads of importance, and no quicker way of going from Richmond to New York than by the infrequently sailing steamers. It was in the early forties.