at is with me, and
why it comes. It is a story that, perhaps, your father might forbid you
to read. I don't know. And, if it was fiction, perhaps he would be
right. But--but--I think--I wonder--you might help me. I can't see how,
but--I feel--"

He faltered suddenly, and seemed for the first time to become
self-conscious and confused.

"Tell me, please," Lily said.

She felt rather as if she were beginning to read some strange French
story by night. Maurice still stood on the hearth.

"It is a sound that is with me," he said. "Only that; never anything
else but that."

"A sound," she repeated.

She thought of their conversation about the bells.

"Yes, it is a cry--the cry of a child."

"Yes?"

"That's nothing--you think? Absurd for a man to heed such a trifle?"

"Why do you think it comes?"

Maurice hesitated. His eyes searched the face of the little girl with an
almost hard gaze of scrutiny, as if he were trying to sum up the
details of her nature.

"Long ago--before I came here, before I was qualified, I was cruel,
bitterly cruel to a child," he said at last, speaking now very coldly
and distinctly.

His eyes were on Lily. Had she made just then any movement of horror or
of disgust, had an expression betokening fear of him come into her eyes,
Maurice knew that his lips would be sealed, that he would bid her
good-night and leave her. But she only looked more intent, more
expectant. He went on.

"I was bitterly cruel to my own child," he said.

Then Lily moved suddenly. Maurice thought she was going to start up. If
she had intended to she choked the impulse. Was she shocked? He could
not tell. She had turned her face away from him. He wondered why, but he
did not know that those last words had given to Lily an abrupt and fiery
insight into the depths of her heart.

"At that time," Maurice said, still speaking very distinctly and
quietly, "I was desperately ambitious. I was bitten by the viper whose
poison, stealing through all a man's veins, is emulation. My only
desire, my only aim in life was to beat all the men of my year, to
astonish all the authorities of the hospital to which I was attached by
the brilliance of my attainments and my achievements, I was ambition
incarnate, and such mad ambition is the most cruel thing in the world.
And my child interfered with my ambition. It cried, how it cried!"

He was becoming less definitely calm.

"It cried through my dreams, my thoughts, my endeavour