k in again to-night."

"She--she had a--a rough time?"

"Yes," said the doctor, "girls of her type do. We've progressed too
far, you know, much too far, for women. She's suffered very much. I'm
sorry."

"Can I see her?"

"You may go in now and stay till Nurse sends you away."

While the doctor let himself out quietly, Osborn tiptoed down the
corridor between the cream walls whose creaminess mattered so little,
and the black-and-white pictures that had lost their values. He tapped
with icy finger-tips upon Marie's door and the nurse let him in.

He looked beyond her to the bed where Marie lay, such a slim little
outline under the covers, such a little, little girl to suffer
tremendously. Her eyes were open, dark and huge and horrified; over
her tousled fair hair they had drawn one of the pink tulle caps, now
come, indeed, into their own.

"There she is," said the nurse cheerfully. "We've made her look very
smart, you see, and she's feeling very well. We shall get on
splendidly now, and the baby's bonnie."

But she could fool neither of these young people; they were too
modern, too analytic, too disobedient. When the horror-struck eyes of
Marie and Osborn met they knew the immensity of what had occurred. No
cheerful professional belittlement could avail. Osborn knelt down by
his wife.

"Leave her to me a bit, Nurse," he said in a strangled voice. "I'll be
very quiet."

"For a few minutes, then," the nurse replied, and she left them.

Osborn put his face down and cried tears that he could not stop. He
longed to feel Marie's hand, forgiving him, on his head, but she had
no comfort for him. She lay so still, without sound or sign, that
soon, checking his grief with an effort nearly too big for him, he
looked up and saw that she was crying, too. She was too weak to cry
passionately, but her weeping was very bitter. This frightened him, so
that he sprang up on tiptoes and called the nurse back. He kept his
own shamed, wretched face in shadow.

The nurse sent him away and Marie had not spoken one word.

He crept into the kitchen and made tea, found cold food and ate a
scratch sort of meal; he had eaten nothing since early morning, and
then not much.

He had received a great big shock.

He did not know that women suffered so. He had sometimes read how
after the birth of a baby, the husband went in and found his wife,
pale perhaps, tired perhaps, but radiant, joyful, triumphant. He had
not known that anguishe