feeling the tiny body relax as a sleeping
baby's will, it was growing slowly rigid. With this realization she strode
to the bed and put the atom down. Before their eyes the body stiffened,
while the head rolled slowly from side to side and under the half-closed
lids the eyeballs rolled with it.

"Convulsions!" announced the corridor nurse, with an anxious look toward
the door. Then, as a bell tinkled, she voiced her relief in a quick
breath. "That's sixty-one. I'm hiking--"

"No, you don't!" The doctor jerked her back; he wanted to shake her.
"You'll hustle some hot water for us, and then you'll stand by to hustle
some more. See?" He was shedding all unnecessary clothing as he spoke, and
Sheila was peeling the atom free of shirt and roundabout as fast as
skilled fingers could move.

It is a wonderful thing to watch the fight between human skill and death
for the life of a baby. So little it takes to swing the victory either
way, so close does it border on the miraculous, that few can stand and see
without feeling the silent, invisible presence of the Nazarene. A life
thus saved seems to gather unto itself a special significance and value
for those who have fought for it and those who receive it again. It
creates new feelings and a clearer vision in blind, unthinking motherhood;
it awakens to a vital response hitherto dormant fatherhood. And even the
callous outsider becomes exalted with the wonder and closeness of that
unseen presence.

As the brown atom writhed from one convulsion into another, Sheila and the
old doctor worked with compressed lips and almost suspended breath; they
worked like a single mind supplied with twice the usual amount of
auxiliaries. They saw, without acknowledging it, the gorgeous, tropical
figure that came and stood half-way between the door and the bed; lips
carmined, throat and cheeks heavy with powder, jewels covering ears, neck,
fingers, and wrists, she looked absurdly unreal beside the nurse in her
uniform and the doctor in his shirt-sleeves. Occasionally Sheila glanced
at her. If they won, would the mother care? The question came back to her
consciousness again and again. In her own experience she knew how often
the thing one called motherhood would come into actual existence after a
struggle like this when birth itself had failed to accomplish anything but
a physical obligation. Believing this, Sheila fought the harder.

After an hour the convulsions subsided. A few more drops of b