ath I
could play no part worthy of her who awaited me, I too rushed away and,
groping my way back through the cellar, sought the side of her who still
crouched in patient waiting against the dismal wall.

IV

THE FINAL SHOCK

Her baby had fallen asleep. I knew this by the faint, low sweetness of
her croon; and, shuddering with the horrors I had witnessed, horrors
which acquired a double force from the contrast presented by the peace
of this quiet spot and the hallowing influence of the sleeping
infant,--I threw myself down in the darkness at her feet, gasping out:

"Oh, thank God and your uncle's seeming harshness, that you have escaped
the doom which has overtaken those others! You and your babe are still
alive; while they--"

"What of them? What has happened to them? You are breathless, trembling;
you have brought no bread--"

"No, no. Food in this house means death. Your relatives gave food and
wine to your uncle at a supper; he, though now in his grave, has
returned the same to them. There was a bottle--"

I stopped, appalled. A shriek, muffled by distance but quivering with
the same note of death I had heard before, had gone up again from the
other side of the wall against which we were leaning.

"Oh!" she gasped; "and my father was at that supper! my father, who died
last night cursing the day he was born! We are an accursed race. I have
known it all my life; perhaps that was why I mistook passion for love;
and my baby--O God, have mercy! God have mercy!"

The plaintiveness of that cry, the awesomeness of what I had seen--of
what was going on at that moment almost within the reach of our
arms--the darkness, the desolation of our two souls, affected me as I
had never been affected in my whole life before. In the concentrated
experience of the last two hours I seemed to live years under this
woman's eyes; to know her as I did my own heart; to love her as I did my
own soul. No growth of feeling ever brought the ecstasy of that
moment's inspiration. With no sense of doing anything strange, with no
fear of being misunderstood, I reached out my hand and, touching hers
where it lay clasped about her infant, I said:

"We are two poor wayfarers. A rough road loses half its difficulties
when trodden by two. Shall we, then, fare on together--we and the little
child?"

She gave a sob; there was sorrow, longing, grief, hope, in its thrilling
low sound. As I recognized the latter emotion I drew her to my b