e world and the Church, but I felt as if God
had justified me by His own triumphant law.

The whole feminine soul in me seemed to swell and throb, and with my
baby at my breast I wanted no more of earth or heaven.

I was still bleeding from the bruises of Fate, but I felt healed of all
my wounds, loaded with benefits, crowned with rewards.

Four days passed like this, varied by visits from the doctor and my
Welsh landlady. Then my nurse began to talk of leaving me.

I did not care. In my ignorance of my condition, and the greed of my
motherly love, I was not sorry she was going so soon. Indeed, I was
beginning to be jealous of her, and was looking forward to having my
baby all to myself.

But nurse, as I remember, was a little ashamed and tried to excuse
herself.

"If I hadn't promised to nurse another lady, I wouldn't leave you, money
or no money," she said. "But the girl" (meaning Emmerjane) "is always
here, and if she isn't like a nurse she's 'andy."

"Yes, yes, I shall be all right," I answered.

On the fifth day my nurse left me, and shocking as that fact seems to me
now, I thought little of it then.

I was entirely happy. I had nothing in the world except my baby, and my
baby had nothing in the world except me. I was still in the dungeon that
had seemed so dreadful to me before--the great dungeon of London to one
who is poor and friendless.

But no matter! I was no longer alone, for there was one more inmate in
my prison-house--my child.

SIXTH PART

I AM LOST

_"Is it nothing to you, ye that pass by . . . ?"_

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

I hate to butt in where I may not be wanted, but if the remainder of my
darling's story is to be understood I must say what was happening in the
meantime to me.

God knows there was never a day on which I did not think of my dear one
at home, wondering what was happening to her, and whether a certain dark
fact which always lay at the back of my mind as a possibility was
actually coming to pass.

But she would be brave--I know that quite well--and I saw plainly that,
if I had to get through the stiff job that was before me, I must put my
shadowy fears away and think only of the dangers I was sure about.

The first of these was that she might suppose our ship was lost, so as
soon as we had set up on old Erebus the wooden lattice towers which
contained our long-distance electric apparatus, I tried to send her that
first message from the Antarctic whi