her spiritual freedom. It was
only what the martyrs of old had done; only the work which fell upon
the upholders of any new religion.

Katharine, walking the floor of her own room, that night, forgot the
holy calm born of the Universal Mind and its optimistic tenets, and by
slow degrees lashed herself into a scientific replica of a nervous
tantrum. Described in unscientific language, she was a mere shaking
bundle of injured and angry egotism. In the language of her creed, she
was a suffering, striving martyr. Her martyrdom, moreover, led her to
order breakfast served to her in her own room. It also led her to eat
hungrily, in the intervals of making her toilet for the train.

She was already hatted and gloved, when Brenton discovered her
intention.

"You are not going out, Katharine?" he asked, with the curious lack of
tact which all men show at times.

"I am."

"But--the baby?"

"Baby is better. I have just been in to see him," she replied, as she
buttoned her coat, and then flicked a grain of dust from its sleeve.

Brenton shut his lips for just a minute. Then,--

"Katharine," he said very gravely; "you must have seen that the baby is
only just alive."

Katharine's glance was resting anxiously upon a drop or two of water on
the fingers of her glove. She seemed not to have heard her husband's
words. He repeated them.

"Katharine, can't you see that our baby, our little boy, is going
fast?"

Katharine looked up.

"Nonsense, Scott!" she said, with perfect calm. "The baby is as well as
he was, last night. If he is so desperately ill, the nurse wouldn't
have gone away and left him all alone, as I found him. The nurse knows
what she is about; that is," swiftly she corrected herself; "she would,
if Doctor Keltridge would let her alone. If anything does happen to the
child, it will be through you."

"Through me?" Brenton whitened.

"Yes," Katharine answered, reckless of her husband's hurt, reckless,
too, of the probable state of his nerves, after his all-night vigil. "I
could have cured baby, if you had kept out of it. Your doctors' poisons
have done harm enough; but your fears, your distrust, have been the
final touch. If you had let me alone, I could have saved him. Even now,
it may not be too late." She turned, her chin in the air and her eyes
bright with anger, although about her lips there lurked a little smile
of pleasure in what seemed to her her own excessive self-control.

Brenton's self-control