at, 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 to defy