d to have Indian
blood in his veins, and Mrs. Sturtevant never saw him without that
awful thrill of recoil. When the little Orientals, men or women,
swayed sidewise and bent with their cheap suitcases filled with
Eastern handiwork, came to the door, she did not draw a long breath
until she had watched them out of sight down the street. It made no
difference to her that they might be Christians, that they might have
suffered persecution in their own land and sought our doorless
entrances of hospitality; she still realised her own aloofness from
them, or rather theirs from her. They had entered existence entirely
outside her chalk-line. She and they walked on parallels which to all
eternity could never meet.

It therefore came to pass that, although she had in the secret depths
of her being bemoaned her childlessness, and had been conscious of
yearnings and longings which were agonies, when Doctor Sturtevant,
after the poor young unknown mother had been laid away in the
Fairbridge cemetery, proposed that they should adopt the bereft
little one, she rebelled.

"If he were a white baby, I wouldn't object that I know of," said
she, "but I can't have this kind. I can't make up my mind to it,
Edward."

"But, Maria, the child is white. He may not be European, but he is
white. That is, while of course he has a dark complexion and dark
eyes and hair, he is as white, in a way, as any child in Fairbridge,
and he will be a beautiful boy. Moreover, we have every reason to
believe that he was born in wedlock. There was a ring on a poor
string of a ribbon on the mother's neck, and there was a fragment of
a letter which Von Rosen managed to make out. He thinks that the poor
child was married to another child of her own race. The boy is all
right and he will be a fine little fellow."

"It is of no use," said Maria Sturtevant. "I can't make up my mind to
adopt a baby, that belonged to that kind of people. I simply can not,
Edward."

Sturtevant gave up the matter for the time being. The baby remained
at Von Rosen's under the care of Mrs. Bestwick, and Jane Riggs, but
when it was a month old, the doctor persuaded his wife to go over and
see it. Maria Sturtevant gazed at the tiny scrap of humanity curled
up in Jane Riggs' darning basket, the old-young face creased as
softly as a rosebud, with none of its beauty, but with a compelling
charm. She watched the weak motion of the infinitesimal legs and arms
beneath the soft smother of wra