'
babies, swaddled and guarded by nurses, lacked the spontaneous charm of
a kitten or a puppy. This baby, however--Joseph his name was, and he was
always so referred to--was different. He spent a great deal of time
alone, sitting erect in his white iron crib. In spite of the conditions
of his birth, he was calm, pink-cheeked and healthy. The first day that
Lydia was up she glanced at him as she passed the door. He gave her
somehow the impression of leading a life apart. At first she only used
to stare at him from the doorway; then she ventured in, leaned on the
crib, offered him a finger to which he clung, invented a game of
clapping of hands, and was rewarded by a toothless smile and a long
complicated gurgle of delight.

The sound was too much for Lydia--the idea that the baby was glad to be
starting out on the tortured adventure of living. She went back to her
own room in tears, weeping not for her own griefs but because all human
beings were so infinitely pathetic.

The next day, Anna, the mother, came in while she was bending over the
crib. Lydia knew her story, the common one--the story of a respectable,
sheltered girl falling suddenly, wildly in love with a handsome boy, and
finding, when after a few months he wearied of her, that she had never
been his wife--that he was already married.

Lydia looked at the neat, blond, spectacled woman beside her. It was
hard to imagine her murdering anyone. She seemed gentle, vague, perhaps
a little defective. Later in their acquaintance she told Lydia how she
had done it. She had not minded his perfidy so much, until he told her
that she had known all along they weren't married--that she'd done it
with her eyes open--that she had been "out for a good time." He was a
paperhanger among other things, and a great pair of shears had been
lying on the table. The first thing she knew they were buried in his
side.

Lydia could not resist asking her whether she regretted what she had
done.

The girl considered. "I think it was right for him to die," she said,
but she was sorry about Joseph. In a little while the baby would be
taken from her and put into a state institution. She was
maternal--primitively maternal--and her real punishment was not
imprisonment but separation from her child. Lydia saw this without
entirely understanding it.

The girl had said to her: "I suppose you can't imagine killing anyone?"

Lydia assured her that she could--oh, very easily. She went back to