She never excused or exonerated herself by that ultimate
joy of motherhood which had possessed her so utterly. She had not been
glad in the beginning; later, she had not been glad enough to give
him--her little, helpless son--all her life. How, indeed, could she
hope to keep him now?

Over and over this she went; and all the while she kept on about her
tasks, deft, skillful, terribly calm.

Mrs. Caldwell observed her with an alarm hardly less than she felt for
the child. "It will kill Sheila if Eric dies," she said to Ted.

"Yes," he groaned, "I think it will."

"What is it, Ted?--the thing that's eating into her heart? There's
more here than even a mother's grief."

"She was writing a story when--when Lila exposed the boy to the fever.
Of course, if she hadn't been--! Oh, poor Sheila!--poor Sheila!" he
ended brokenly.

For all blame had gone out of Ted; his gentleness to Sheila was no
longer that of forbearance, but of an immense and inarticulate pity.
It racked him that he could not stand between her and her contrition,
her pitiful sorrow; it hurt him intolerably that he could not hold them
from her with his very hands. Almost he lost the sense of his own sick
pain in watching hers. Once he tried to take her in his arms and
comfort her. "Don't suffer so!" he pleaded. "Don't suffer so!"

But she pulled away from him, denying herself the solace of his
sympathy. "I can't suffer _enough_!" she cried. "I can _never_ suffer
enough to atone for what I've done!"

There came a night when they put Sheila out of the room--Mrs. Caldwell
and Ted; literally put her out, with hands so tender and so firm.

"I have a right to be with him when he dies!" she cried.

"Sheila--he will need you to-morrow. You _must_ rest--for his sake."
So they sought to deceive and compel her.

"No," she insisted, "he will not need me to-morrow. But he needs me
now--to die with."

"He may not die."

"He 'may' not die. You don't say he _will_ not die! Oh, he will
die!--and he's too little to die without his mother!"

And then they put her out.

Ted led her away to the room where she was to "rest" and shut her
within it, and she lay down on the couch as he had bidden her to do.
It was easy enough to be obedient in this, since she was barred out
from the one place where she yearned to be. Since she could not be
there, it did not matter where she was or what she did. It was easiest
just to do what she was told.

She knew