dley, gentle and direct, had been the Conroys' family
physician for years. Nellie, who arrived in an hour, had been through
the experience often herself, and was friendly and helpful.

She liked Rose, admired her tremendously and the thought--an odd one for
Nellie--crossed her mind that tonight she was downright beautiful. When
at dawn, Dr. Bradley whispered: "She has been so brave, Mrs. Mall, I
can't bear to tell her the child is not alive. Wouldn't it be better for
you to do so?" She shrank from the task. "I can't; I simply can't," she
protested, honest tears pouring down her thin face.

"Could you, Mr. Wade?"

Martin strode into Rose's room, all his own disappointment adding
bitterness to his words: "Well, I knew you'd done it and you have. It's
a fine boy, but he came dead."

Out of the dreariness and the toil, out of the hope, the suffering and
the high courage had come--nothing. As Rose lay, the little still form
clasped against her, she was too broken for tears. Life had played
her another trick. Indignation toward Martin gathered volume with her
returning strength.

"You don't deserve a child," she told him bitterly. "You might treat him
when he grew up as you treat me."

"I've never laid hand to you," said Martin gruffly, certain stinging
words of Nellie's still smarting. When she chose, his sister's tongue
could be waspish. She had tormented him with it all the way to her home.
He had been goaded into flaring back and both had been thoroughly angry
when they separated, yet he was conscious that he came nearer a feeling
of affection for her than for any living person. Well, not affection,
precisely, he corrected. It was rather that he relished, with a
quizzical amusement, the completeness of their mutual comprehension. She
was growing to be more like their mother, too. Decidedly, this was the
type of woman he should have married, not someone soft and eager and
full of silly sentiment like Rose. Why didn't she hold her own as
Nellie did? Have more snap and stamina? It was exasperating--the way she
frequently made him feel as if he actually were trampling on something
defenseless.

He now frankly hated her. There was not dislike merely; there was acute
antipathy. He took a delight in having her work harder and harder. It
used to be "Rose," but now it was always "say" or "you" or "hey." Once
she asked cynically if he had ever heard of a "Rose of Sharon" to which
he maliciously replied: "She turned out to b