a bad combination. However, it was a last
chance. We had to take it. I'm sorry. I'm glad we were able to save the
child. The nurse will give her the best of care."

He went out into his practical world as a laborer leaves his work. So
may we all. Eugene went over and stood by Angela. He was tremendously
sorry for the long years of mistrust that had brought this about. He was
ashamed of himself, of life--of its strange tangles. She was so little,
so pale, so worn. Yes, he had done this. He had brought her here by his
lying, his instability, his uncertain temperament. It was fairly murder
from one point of view, and up to this last hour he had scarcely
relented. But life had done things to him, too. Now, now---- Oh, hell,
Oh, God damn! If she would only recover, he would try and do better.
Yes, he would. It sounded so silly coming from him, but he would try.
Love wasn't worth the agony it cost. Let it go. Let it go. He could
live. Truly there were hierarchies and powers, as Alfred Russel Wallace
pointed out. There was a God somewhere. He was on His throne. These
large, dark, immutable forces, they were not for nothing. If she would
only not die, he would try--he would behave. He would! he would!

He gazed at her, but she looked so weak, so pale now he did not think
she could come round.

"Don't you want to come home with me, Eugene?" said Myrtle, who had come
back some time before, at his elbow. "We can't do anything here now! The
nurse says she may not become conscious for several hours. The baby is
all right in their care."

The baby! the baby! He had forgotten it, forgotten Myrtle. He was
thinking of the long dark tragedy of his life--the miasma of it.

"Yes," he said wearily. It was nearly morning. He went out and got into
a taxi and went to his sister's home, but in spite of his weariness, he
could scarcely sleep. He rolled feverishly.

In the morning he was up again, early, anxious to go back and see how
Angela was--and the child.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The trouble with Angela's system, in addition to a weak heart, was that
it was complicated at the time of her delivery by that peculiar
manifestation of nervous distortion or convulsions known as eclampsia.
Once in every five hundred cases (or at least such was the statistical
calculation at the time), some such malady occurred to reduce the number
of the newborn. In every two such terminations one mother also died, no
matter what the anticipatory prepara