irl's face, that all the wistful yearning of the night was reflected in
her eyes. What had happened, she wondered, to change their sparkling
brightness into this brooding expectancy.

The car stopped before the house to which Patty had come with Gershom;
and as they got out, they saw that it was entirely dark except for the
dim flicker of a jet of gas in the hall. By the pavement a car was
standing, and from somewhere at the back there came the sound of a baby
crying inconsolably in the darkness. While they entered the hall, and
went up the broad old-fashioned flight of stairs, that plaintive wail
followed them, growing gradually fainter as they ascended, but never
fading utterly into silence. When they reached the second storey, and
turned toward the back of the house, a door at the end of the passage
opened, and an old woman, with a hunch back, and a piece of knitting in
her gnarled hands, came slowly to meet them. Standing there under the
jet of gas, which flickered with a hissing noise, she looked at them
with glassy impersonal eyes and a face that was as austere as Destiny.
Afterward, when Corinna thought over the impressions of that tragic
night, she felt that they were condensed into the symbol of the old
woman with the crooked back, and the thin crying of the baby which
floated up from the darkness below.

"We came to see Mrs. Green," explained Corinna.

The old woman nodded, and as she turned to limp down the passage, her
ball of gray yarn slipped from her grasp and rolled after her until
Corinna recovered it. In silence the cripple led the way, and in silence
they followed her, until she opened the closed door at the end of the
hall, and they entered the room, with the sickening sweetish smell and
the window which gave on the black hulk of the ailantus tree. From
behind a screen, which was covered with faded wall paper, the figure of
the doctor emerged while they waited, an ample middle-aged man, with the
air of having got into his clothes in a hurry and the face of a
pragmatic philosopher. He motioned commandingly for them to approach;
and going to the other side of the screen, they found the dying woman
gazing at them with eager eyes.

"She is doing nicely," remarked the doctor, with the cheerful alacrity
of one in whom familiarity has bred contempt of death. "Keep her quiet.
One can never tell about these cases."

He made an explanatory gesture in the direction of his pocket. "I'll go
down on the porch