I heard it when the stars were out over London, and in the dawn,
when from my lodging windows I could see the first light on the Thames.
Miss Alston, at last it maddened me."

Lily was pale. She scarcely knew of what she was expectant.

"I had tried to comfort the child. I had failed. Now I determined to
forget it, to shut it out from my working life. At last, by force of
will, I almost succeeded. I read, I wrote, I analysed the causes of
disease, the results of certain treatments as opposed to the results of
others. And sometimes I no longer heard my child, no longer knew whether
it wailed and wept or whether it was silent. But one evening--"

Maurice stopped. His face was very white and his eyes burned with
excitement.

"One evening," he repeated, speaking almost with difficulty, and with
the obstinate note in his voice of one telling a secret half against his
will and better judgement, "I could not work. The wail of the child was
so loud, so alarmed, so full of a fear that seemed to my imagination
intelligent, and based on a knowledge of something I did not know, that
my professional instinct was aroused. At first I listened, sitting at my
writing table. Then I got up and softly approached the folding doors.
Beyond them, in the dark, the child lamented like one to whom a nameless
horror draws near. Never had I known it to weep like this; for this was
no cry after a mother, no cry of desire, no cry even of sorrow. It was a
half-strangled scream of terror, I did not go into the room, but as I
listened, I knew--"

He faltered.

"Yes," Lily said.

"As I listened I knew what the cry meant. Miss Alston, is it not strange
that even a baby who scarcely knows life knows so well--death?"

"Death!"

"Yes, recognises its coming, shrinks from it, fears it with the terror
of a clear intelligence. Is it not very strange?"

"Death!" Lily repeated.

She too was pale. Maurice continued in a low voice.

"I understood the meaning of the cry, and I did not enter the inner
room. No, I walked back to my writing table, put my hands over my
ears--to deaden the cry--and gave myself again to work. How long I
worked I don't know, but presently I heard a loud knocking at the door
of my room. I sprang up and opened it. My landlady stood outside.

"'What do you want?' I asked.

"The good woman's face was grave.

"'Sir, I know that child must be ill,' she said.

"'Ill--why? What do you mean?'

"'Oh, sir, its crying is awful.