e. I'll go back to her now."

"Is she--is she--dangerously--?" asked Lydia in a low, steady voice.

"Yes; she is," he said unsparingly.

The telegram Lydia sent her husband read: "Ariadne suddenly taken very
sick. Dr. Melton says dangerously. He thinks she does not suffer much,
though she seems to. When shall I expect you?"

The answer she received in a few hours read: "Have two nurses. Get
Jones, Cleveland, consultation. Impossible to leave."

It was handed her as she was running up the stairs with a pitcher of hot
water. She read it, as she did everything that day, in a dreamlike
rapidity and quietness, and showed it to Dr. Melton without comment. He
handed it back without a word. Later, he turned for an instant from the
little bed to say, irrelevantly, "Peterson, of Toledo, would be better
than Jones, if I have to have anybody. But so far, it's simple
enough--damnably simple."

He was obliged to leave for a time after this, called by a patient at
the point of death. That seemed quite natural to Lydia. Death was thick
in the air. He left the baby to a clear-eyed, deft-handed, impersonal
trained nurse, on whom Lydia waited slavishly, sitting motionless in a
corner of the room until she was sent for something, then flying
noiselessly upon her errand.

Her mother and father were out of town, and Marietta limited herself to
telephoning frequent inquiries. She told 'Stashie to tell her sister she
knew she would be only in the way, with two nurses in the house. Lydia
made 'Stashie answer all the telephone calls. She felt that if she broke
her silence, if she tried to speak--and then she could not bear to be
out of the sight of the little figure with the flushed cheeks, moving
her head back and forth on the pillow and gazing about with bright,
unseeing eyes. As night came on, she began to give, in a voice not her
own, little piteous cries of suffering, or strange delirious mockeries
of her pretty laughter and quaint, unintelligible, prattling talk. Once,
as the long, hot night stood still, the baby called out, quite clearly:
"Mamma! Mamma!" It was the first time she had ever said it.

Lydia sprang up and rushed toward the bed like an insane person, her
arms outstretched, her eyes glittering. Dr. Melton did not forbid her to
take up her child, but he said in a neutral tone, "It would be better
for her to lie perfectly quiet."

Lydia stopped short, shuddering. The doctor did not take his eyes from
his little patient.