nd there were many climaxes of dreams and
aspirations, of loves and bitter jealousies. And out of all this straining
and this fever of humanity, came messages to Deborah: last appeals for aid
and advice, and gifts for the child who was to be born; tiny garments
quaintly made by women and girls from Italy, from Russia and from Poland;
baby blankets, wraps and toys and curious charms and amulets. There were so
many of these gifts.

"There's enough for forty babies," Deborah told her father. "What on earth
am I to do, to avoid hurting anyone's feelings? And isn't it rather awful,
the way these inequalities will crop up in spite of you? I know of eight
tenement babies born down there in this one week. How much fuss and
feathers is made over them, and their coming into the world, poor mites?"
Roger smiled at his daughter.

"You remind me of Jekyll and Hyde," he said.

"Father! What a horrible thought! What have Jekyll and Hyde to do with me?"

"Nothing, my dear," he answered. "Only it's queer and a little uncanny,
something I've never seen before, this double mother life of yours."

* * * * *

It was only a few days later when coming home one evening he found that
Deborah's doctor had put her to bed and installed a nurse. There followed a
week of keen suspense when Roger stayed home from the office. She liked to
have him with her, and sitting at her bedside he saw how changed his
daughter was, how far in these few hours she had drawn into herself. He had
suspected for some time that all was not well with Deborah, and Allan
confirmed his suspicions. There was to be grave danger both for the mother
and the child. It would come out all right, of course, he strove to
reassure himself. Nothing else could happen now, with her life so
splendidly settled at last. That Fate could be so pitiless--no, it was
unthinkable!

"This is what comes of your modern woman!" Roger exclaimed to Allan one
night. "This is the price she's paying for those nerve-racking years of
work!"

The crisis came toward the end of the week. And while for one entire night
and through the day that followed and far into the next night the doctors
and nurses fought for life in the room upstairs, Roger waited, left to
himself, sitting in his study or restlessly moving through the house. And
still that thought was with him--the price! It was kept in his mind by the
anxious demands which her big family made for news. The telephone