must not be so. My child must be welcome!"
Elizabeth told herself each morning, but she was too tired; it was not
welcome, and all her efforts failed to make it so.

John was vexed when he found her in tears.

"The idea!" he exclaimed. "Now if we were too poor to feed and clothe it
there'd be some excuse, but----" He made his pause as expressive as he
could.

"It isn't that. I--I'm so tired and--I ought to be glad--and--and I'm
not," she began.

"Well, I suppose with mother gone"--Mrs. Hunter had returned to her old
home on a visit--"you _have_ got a good deal to look after, but I've got
to get to the field now. You're always raking something up that looks
wrong to you. If you'd stick to your work and not run around looking for
trouble you'd be able to want it, maybe."

The force of her husband's suggestion struck the girl. Perhaps it was true
that she had missed the very highest for herself in loving ease and
comfort enough to seek them. To put discontent away from her and to keep
her thoughts occupied she began the spring housecleaning. There was so
much regular cooking and milk work that only one room could be attacked at
a time, but she kept busy, and the plan worked admirably during the day.
She was not sleeping well, however, and found that nights have a power all
their own. When the lights went out, thought held the girl in its
relentless grip. It was of no use to lengthen her working hours in the
hope that sleep would come more promptly, for the more exhausted Elizabeth
became the less able was she to sleep, and thought stared at her out of
the darkness with eyes like living coals.

Wherever Elizabeth turned this monster confronted her, this monster whose
tail was a question mark, whose body obscured everything on the horizon of
the immediate future except its own repulsive presence, and threw her back
upon the suffering present and the much to be deplored past. Was it right
to permit a child to come when joy had gone out of relations between its
parents? This question grew and ripened and spread, and whenever she
summoned up enough will-power to weed it out for an hour it would spring
up anew, refreshed and more tenacious than ever.

"Whether it's right or not for John and me to have a child after we've
quit loving each other, if I can only be glad it's coming, or even be
willing to have it, I won't mind, now," she told herself. But she was not
glad, and she was not even willing. She dragged herself abou