our babe are still
alive; while they----"

"What of them? What has happened to them? You are breathless, trembling;
you have brought no bread----"

"No, no. Food in this house means death. Your relatives gave food and
wine to your uncle at a supper; he, though now in his grave, has
returned the same to them. There was a bottle----"

I stopped, appalled. A shriek, muffled by distance but quivering with
the same note of death I had heard before, had gone up again from the
other side of the wall against which we were leaning.

"Oh!" she gasped, "and my father was at that supper! my father, who died
last night cursing the day he was born! We are an accursed race! I have
known it all my life. Perhaps that was why I mistook passion for love.
And my baby--O God, have mercy! God, have mercy!"

The plaintiveness of that cry, the awesomeness of what I had seen--of
what was going on at that moment almost within the reach of our
arms--the darkness, the desolation of our two souls, affected me as I
had never been affected in my whole life before. In the concentrated
experience of the last two hours I seemed to have lived years under this
woman's eyes; to know her as I did my own heart; to love her as I did my
own soul. No growth of feeling ever brought the ecstasy of that moment's
inspiration. With no sense of doing anything strange, with no fear of
being misunderstood, I reached out my hand, and, touching hers where it
lay clasped about her infant, I said:

"We are two poor wayfarers. A rough road loses half its difficulties
when trodden by two. Shall we, then, fare on together--you, I, and the
little child?"

She gave a sob; there was sorrow, longing, grief, hope in its thrilling,
low sound. As I recognised the latter emotion I drew her to my breast.
The child did not separate us.

"We shall be happy," I murmured, and her sigh seemed to answer a
delicious "Yes," when suddenly there came a shock to the partition
against which we leaned, and, starting from my clasp, she cried:

"Our duty is in there. Shall we think of ourselves, or even of each
other, while these men, all relatives of mine, are dying on the other
side of this wall?"

Seizing my hand, she dragged me to the trap; but here I took the lead
and helped her down the ladder. When I had her safely on the floor at
the foot she passed in front of me again; but once up the steps and in
front of the kitchen door I thrust her behind me, for one glance into
the room b