appiness, and then in a twinkling it was
gone. The child fell sick, within a few hours its small existence hung by a
thread--and to Roger's startled eyes a new Deborah was revealed! Tense and
silent on her bed, her sensitive lips compressed with pain, her birthmark
showing a jagged line of fiery red upon her brow as her ears kept straining
to catch every sound from the nursery adjoining, through hours of stern
anguish she became the kind of mother that she had once so
dreaded--shutting out everything else in the world: people, schools, all
other children, rich or poor, well, sick or dying! Here was the crisis of
Deborah's life!

One night as she lay listening, with her hand gripping Roger's tight,
frowning abruptly she said to him, in a harsh, unnatural voice:

"They don't care any longer, none of them care! _I'm_ safe and they've
stopped worrying, for they know they'll soon have me back at work! The
work," she added fiercely, "that made my body what it is, not fit to bear a
baby!" She threw a quick and tortured look toward the door of the other
room. "My work for those others, all those years, will be to blame if this
one dies! And if it doesn't live I'm through! I won't go on! I couldn't!
I'd be too bitter after this--toward all of them--_those children_!"

These last two words were whispers so bitter they made Roger cold.

"But this child is going to live," he responded hoarsely. Its mother stared
up with a quivering frown. The next moment her limbs contracted as from an
electric shock. There had come a faint wail from the other room.

And this went on for three days and nights. Again Roger lived as in a
dream. He saw haggard faces from time to time of doctors, nurses, servants.
He saw Allan now and then, his tall ungainly figure stooped, his features
gaunt, his strong wide jaw set like a vise, but his eyes kind and steady
still, his low voice reassuring. And Roger noticed John at times hobbling
quickly down a hall and stopping on his crutches before a closed door,
listening. Then these figures would recede, and it was as though he were
alone in the dark.

At last the nightmare ended. One afternoon as he sat in his study, Allan
came in slowly and dropped exhausted into a chair. He turned to Roger with
a smile.

"Safe now, I think," he said quietly.

Roger went to Deborah and found her asleep, her face at peace. He went to
his room and fell himself into a long dreamless slumber.

In the days which followed, a