But with the children it is otherwise. They
are hers and yours alone. I have no part nor lot in them, and whether
they be dead or living I know well you love them always, and will love
them beyond the grave if you may find them there. Already I grow old,
who waited twenty years and more before I was your wife, and I shall
give you no other children. One I gave you, and God took it back lest
I should be too happy; yet its name was not on your lips with those
strange names. My dead babe is little to you, husband!'
Here she choked, bursting into tears; nor did I think it well to answer
her that there was this difference in the matter, that whereas, with
the exception of one infant, those sons whom I had lost were almost
adolescent, the babe she bore lived but sixty days.
Now when the Queen first put it in my mind to write down the history of
my life, I remembered this outbreak of my beloved wife; and seeing that
I could write no true tale and leave out of it the story of her who was
also my wife, Montezuma's daughter, Otomie, Princess of the Otomie, and
of the children that she gave me, I let the matter lie. For I knew well,
that though we spoke very rarely on the subject during all the many
years we passed together, still it was always in Lily's mind; nor did
her jealousy, being of the finer sort, abate at all with age, but rather
gathered with the gathering days.
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