were talking to himself. "These intestines are apt to become
unmanageable. If you just lift up the ends, doctor. That's right. The
sponge, Miss Wood. Now, if we can just cut here enough"--he was cutting
again like an honest carpenter or cabinet worker.

He dropped the knife he held into Miss Wood's bowl of water. He reached
into the bleeding, wound, constantly sponged by the nurse, exposing
something. What was that? Eugene's heart jerked. He was reaching down
now in there with his middle finger--his fore and middle fingers
afterwards, and saying, "I don't find the leg. Let's see. Ah, yes. Here
we have it!"

"Can I move the head a little for you, doctor?" It was the young doctor
at his left talking.

"Careful! Careful! It's bent under in the region of the coccyx. I have
it now, though. Slowly, doctor, look out for the placenta."

Something was coming up out of this horrible cavity, which was trickling
with blood from the cut. It was queer a little foot, a leg, a body, a
head.

"As God is my judge," said Eugene to himself, his eyes brimming again.

"The placenta, doctor. Look after the peritoneum, Miss Wood. It's alive,
all right. How is her pulse, Miss De Sale?"

"A little weak, doctor."

"Use less ether. There, now we have it! We'll put that back. Sponge.
We'll have to sew this afterwards, Willets. I won't trust this to heal
alone. Some surgeons think it will, but I mistrust her recuperative
power. Three or four stitches, anyhow."

They were working like carpenters, cabinet workers, electricians. Angela
might have been a lay figure for all they seemed to care. And yet there
was a tenseness here, a great hurry through slow sure motion. "The less
haste, the more speed," popped into Eugene's mind--the old saw. He
stared as if this were all a dream--a nightmare. It might have been a
great picture like Rembrandt's "The Night Watch." One young doctor, the
one he did not know, was holding aloft a purple object by the foot. It
might have been a skinned rabbit, but Eugene's horrified eyes realized
that it was his child--Angela's child--the thing all this horrible
struggle and suffering was about. It was discolored, impossible, a myth,
a monster. He could scarcely believe his eyes, and yet the doctor was
striking it on the back with his hand, looking at it curiously. At the
same moment came a faint cry--not a cry, either--only a faint, queer
sound.

"She's awfully little, but I guess she'll make out." It was Dr. Wille