say that, mother!" she cried. "I did my best.
She wouldn't come. I--I can't tell you where she's gone, but she promised
to write, to send me her address."

"Lise" Hannah's cry seemed like the uncomprehending whimper of a stricken
child, and then a hidden cadence made itself felt, a cadence revealing to
Janet with an eloquence never before achieved the mystery of mother love,
and by some magic of tone was evoked a new image of Lise--of Lise as she
must be to Hannah. No waywardness, no degradation or disgrace could
efface it. The infant whom Hannah had clutched to her breast, the woman,
her sister, whom Janet had seen that day were one--immutably one. This,
then, was what it meant to be a mother! All the years of deadening hope
had not availed to kill the craving--even in this withered body it was
still alive and quick. The agony of that revelation was scarcely to be
borne. And it seemed that Lise, even in the place where she was, must
have heard that cry and heeded it. And yet--the revelation of Lise's
whereabouts, of Lise's contemplated act Janet had nearly been goaded into
making, died on her lips. She could not tell Hannah! And Lise's child
must not come into a world like this. Even now the conviction remained,
fierce, exultant, final. But if Janet had spoken now Hannah would not
have heard her. Under the storm she had begun to rock, weeping
convulsively.... But gradually her weeping ceased. And to Janet,
helplessly watching, this process of congealment was more terrible even
than the release that only an unmitigated violence of grief had been able
to produce. In silence Hannah resumed her shrunken duties, and when these
were finished sat awhile, before going to bed, her hands lying listless
in her lap. She seemed to have lived for centuries, to have exhausted the
gamut of suffering which, save for that one wild outburst, had been the
fruit of commonplace, passive, sordid tragedy that knows no touch of
fire....

The next morning Janet was awakened by the siren. Never, even in the days
when life had been routine and commonplace, had that sound failed to
arouse in her a certain tremor of fear; with its first penetrating
shriek, terror invaded her: then, by degrees, overcoming her numbness,
came an agonizing realization of tragedy to be faced. The siren blew and
blew insistently, as though it never meant to stop; and now for the first
time she seemed to detect in it a note of futility. There were those who
would dare t