he insistent cry of a neglected child. Maria
said to herself that she did not believe but the French nurse had
taken advantage of Her absence, and had slipped out on some errand
and left the baby alone.

The baby continued to wail, and a note of despair crept into the
wail. Maria could endure it no longer. She ran across the hall and
flung open the door. The baby lay crying in a little pink-lined
basket. Maria bent over it, and the baby at once stopped crying. She
opened her mouth in a toothless smile, and she held up little, waving
pink hands to Maria. Maria lifted the baby out of her basket and
pressed her softly, with infinite care, as one does something very
precious, to her childish bosom, and at once something strange seemed
to happen to her. She became, as it were, illuminated by love.

Chapter XI

Maria had fallen in love with the baby, and her first impulse, as in
the case of all true love, was secrecy. Why she should have been
ashamed of her affection, her passion, for it was, in fact, passion,
her first, she could not have told. It was the sublimated infatuation
half compounded of dreams, half of instinct, which a little girl
usually has for her doll. But Maria had never had any particular love
for a doll. She had possessed dolls, of course, but she had never
been quite able to rise above the obvious sham of them, the cloth and
the sawdust and the paint. She had wondered how some little girls
whom she had known had loved to sleep with their dolls; as for her,
she would as soon have thought of taking pleasure in dozing off with
any little roll of linen clasped in her arms. It was rather singular,
for she had a vivid imagination, but it had balked at a doll. When,
as sometimes happened, she saw a little girl of her own age, wheeling
with solemnity a doll in a go-cart, she viewed her with amazement and
contempt, and thought privately that she was not altogether bright.
But this baby was different. It did not have to be laid on its back
to make its eyes close, it did not have to be shaken and squeezed to
make it vociferous. It was alive, and Maria, who was unusually alive
in her emotional nature, was keenly aware of that effect. This
little, tender, rosy thing was not stuffed with sawdust, it was
stuffed with soul and love. It could smile; the smile was not painted
on its face in a doll-factory. Maria was so thankful that this baby,
Ida's baby, did not have Her smile, unchanging and permanent for all
ob