the truth? It
wouldn't let her. Nobody could stay good around Barclay. Even I
couldn't, and I was a woman when I met him. I'm decent, inside, McGill.
Honestly I am, and I've been sorry every day since you left. Oh, I've
paid for what I did! And I'll pay more, if I have to, but she mustn't be
part of the price. No! You've got to help me. Don't you see?"

She mistook his gesture of bewilderment for one of refusal, then hurried
to one final, frenzied appeal, although at a fearful cost to herself. It
was this which had come to her in the dance-hall; it was this that she
had led up to without allowing herself time in which to weaken.

"Listen! She shouldn't stay with me, even if I get away; it wouldn't be
good for her; besides, Barclay would find us some time; or, if he
didn't, I'm too sick to last much longer. Then she'd be alone. You're
rich, McGill. You're John Daniels. You'll have to take her--not for my
sake, understand, but--"

"_I?_" The man started. "I take Barclay's baby? Great God!"

There was a moment of silence during which the wife strove to steady
herself, then she said:

"She's not his--she's yours--ours."

McGill uttered a great cry. It issued from the depths of his being and
racked him dreadfully. He swung ponderously toward the rear room, then
fell to trembling so that he could not proceed. He stared at the woman,
lifted his hands, then dropped them; his lips shook. A fretful, sleepy
complaint issued from the chamber, at which the mother raised a warning
finger, and the necessity for silence calmed him more quickly than
anything else could have done.

"_My--baby!_" he whispered, while he felt something melt within him and
was filled with such an aching joy that he sobbed with the agony of it.

His wife's punishment overflowed when he breathed, fiercely:

"Then give her to me. You can't keep her. You can't touch her. You ain't
fit."

She bowed her head in assent, although his torture was nothing as
compared with hers.

"You'll help me get away from Barclay, won't you?" she asked, supporting
herself unsteadily.

"Barclay! I forgot him! He's the one that did all this, ain't he? He
brought you to--this; and my baby, too. He made her live among women
like these. He raised her in slime--" The speaker's face became slowly,
frightfully distorted.

His wife went swiftly to him; she struggled to fend him away from the
door, but he moved irresistibly. They wrestled breathlessly so as not to
awaken th