long that leaf takes to loosen. He is better. The
doctor certainly thought that he was better. If he only gets well. O
God, let him get well, and I will serve you all my life!
Three--four--five--For twenty-four hours we thought you would slip
through our fingers. Somebody said that--somebody--it must have been the
doctor. And he was talking of me, not of Harry. That was twenty-six
years ago, and my mother was enduring then all this agony that I am
feeling to-night. Twenty-six years ago--perhaps at this very hour, she
sat beside me alone as I am sitting now by Harry. And before that other
women went through it. All the world over, wherever there are
mothers--north, south, east, west--from the first baby that was born on
the earth--they have every one suffered what I am suffering now--for it
is the pang of motherhood! To escape it one must escape birth and escape
the love that is greater than one's self." And she understood suddenly
that suffering and love are inseparable, that when one loves another
more than one's self, one has opened the gate by which anguish will
enter. She had forgotten to count the leaves, and when she remembered
and looked again, the last one had fallen. Against the parted white
curtains, the naked bough arched black and solitary. Even the small
silent birds that had swayed dejectedly to and fro on the branches all
day had flown off into the darkness. Presently, the light in the window
went out, and as the hours wore on, a fine drizzling rain began to fall,
as soft as tears, from the starless sky over the mulberry tree. A sense
of isolation greater than any she had ever known attacked her like a
physical chill, and rising, she went over to the fire and stirred the
pile of coal into a flame. She was alone in her despair, and she
realized, with a feeling of terror, that one is always alone when one
despairs, that there is a secret chamber in every soul where neither
love nor sympathy can follow one. If Oliver were here beside her--if he
were standing close to her in that throbbing circle around the bed--she
would still be separated from him by the immensity of that inner space
which is not measured by physical distances. "No, even if he were here,
he could not reach me," she said, and an instant later, with one of
those piercing illuminations which visit even perfectly normal women in
moments of great intensity, she thought quickly, "If every woman told
the truth to herself, would she say that there i