side his wonderings, looked at his cuff, at his
watch, and shut his fingers upon the bottle and the spoon.

As for Katharine, it would have been well-nigh impossible for any one
outside the influence of the mysterious tenets of her scientific creed,
to analyze all she felt, that night. Moreover, her insulted creed, had
the truth been told, seemed to herself scarcely more to be considered
than her insulted self. The child was her own property. She had given
it birth; it was for her alone to dictate its experiences. It was her
child; not in any actual sense the child of Brenton. And Brenton, too,
was hers. Little as she might have come to love him--for by now
Katharine had passed the epoch where she reckoned him as anything
beyond a subject for critical analysis and consequent deploring--little
as she might have come to love him, he was yet her husband and so, in a
sense, her chattel. It was for her to rule them both, her husband and
her child; she should be dominant, they humbly subject. And now, all of
a sudden, they both of them had thrown off her dominance, the child
unconsciously, Brenton of his full volition. Apart from any question of
the theologic controversy, the household had cast aside her sway, had,
in a sense and temporarily, deposed her from her domestic throne, she
the strong one of them all. Only her stoically optimistic creed kept
Katharine, alone in her own room, from biting at her carefully-groomed
finger tips.

And, besides, there was the question of the theologic controversy. What
right had Brenton, or the nurse, or the meddlesome old doctor with his
hair on end and without his cuffs, to come inside her house and overset
her religion? To elevate their own, instead? It was her religion, just
as it was her house, her child. And her religion was good. Else, she
never would have adopted it. What matter if their cruder minds must
have the crass physical details of bottles and spoons with which to
fight sin-born disease? What if their narrow blindness destroyed their
vision of the all-embracing, all-compelling Mind, source of Holiness,
and of Knowledge, and, by consequence, of Health? Should she, by reason
of their ignoble interferences and persecutions, yield her own
allegiance to the Higher Light? Not she! Rather would she fling
herself, heart and soul, into the freshening tide of her own visible
church. Out of its ritual only, could she gain new fervour to bear and
endure and then, if need be, fight for