.

And now there came the question: "Why deny them any longer?" Eric had
been a very healthy baby from the first; he had, also, an excellent
nurse, a young mulatto girl who shared her race's enthusiasm for
children. In the kitchen ruled an old cook who brooked no interference
from "Li'l Miss." Obviously, neither her child nor her house demanded
all of Sheila's time. So in the quiet afternoons, when Eric had been
taken outdoors, she began to write for an hour or two. Surely, she
argued, she now had a right to those two hours out of each twenty-four,
especially since she did not take them from her husband, her son, or
her home. It was her own leisure, her own opportunity for rest, that
she sacrificed, if sacrifice there was.

But though she justified herself, she somehow said nothing about the
matter to Ted. She agreed with him now--Oh, warmly enough!--that
motherhood was the greatest thing in life for a woman; but she did not,
she never would, believe with him that it must be the only thing. Nor
should he believe it always, she told herself. She would prove to him
that a woman could be both mother and artist. She would prove it to
him, as she had dreamed of doing--but not just yet. They loved each
other so dearly, they were so happy together, that she shrank from
disturbing their harmony by any discussion or dissension. And
discussion and dissension there would be before Ted could be converted.
Amiable as he was in his healthy, hearty fashion, he would be
intolerant and irritable about this. So she worked on in secret; and
for a couple of months nothing and no one was the worse for it.

Then, when Eric was two years old, he was taken ill; suddenly, swiftly,
terribly, as a little child can be smitten from rosy vigor to death's
very brink. The disease was scarlet fever.

"How can he have gotten it?" Sheila and Ted asked each other,
bewildered and agonized. But soon--only too soon--they knew. Lila,
the nurse, disappeared directly after the verdict was pronounced.
"Afraid!" cried Sheila scornfully, "afraid--though she said she loved
him!"

"Yes'm," agreed old Lucindy, who had come from her kitchen to help
nurse the boy with a loyalty that was in itself a scathing comment on
Lila's defection, "yes'm, she's feared all right--but not ob gittin'
fever."

There was something savage in her tone at sound of which Sheila and Ted
straightened from their little son's crib and looked to her for
explanation.

"