[Illustration with caption: He sprang up trembling to his feet.]
But the baby seemed well pleased with his laughter, and stopped to
throw back its head and smile and coo and laugh gently with him as
though the joke was a very good one which they shared in common. Then
it struggled solemnly to its feet and came pattering toward him on a
run, with both bare arms held out, and with a look of such confidence
in him, and welcome in its face, that Raegen stretched out his arms
and closed the baby's fingers fearfully and gently in his own.
He had never seen so beautiful a child. There was dirt enough on its
hands and face, and its torn dress was soiled with streaks of coal and
ashes. The dust of the floor had rubbed into its bare knees, but the
face was like no other face that Rags had ever seen. And then it
looked at him as though it trusted him, and just as though they had
known each other at some time long before, but the eyes of the baby
somehow seemed to hurt him so that he had to turn his face away, and
when he looked again it was with a strangely new feeling of
dissatisfaction with himself and of wishing to ask pardon. They were
wonderful eyes, black and rich, and with a deep superiority of
knowledge in them, a knowledge that seemed to be above the knowledge
of evil; and when the baby smiled at him, the eyes smiled too with
confidence and tenderness in them that in some way frightened Rags and
made him move uncomfortably.
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