d to care what you say or how you say it.
There ain't nobody here to mind you. For I tell you," she stormed,
"there ain't no boy--no more!"

He caught her hand.

"Let go my hand!" she commanded. "Keep off, Jim! I ain't in no temper
to stand it--to-night."

He withdrew. "Millie," he asked, in distress, "the boy ain't----"

"Dead?" she laughed. "No. I give him away. He was different from us.
I didn't have no right to keep him. I give him to a parson. Because,"
she added, defiantly, "I wasn't fit to bring him up. And he ain't here
no more," she sighed, blankly sweeping the moonlit room. "I'm all
alone--now."

"Poor girl!" he muttered.

She was tempted by this sympathy. "Go home, Jim," she said. "It ain't
fair to stay. I'm all alone, now--and it ain't treating me right."

"Millie," he answered, "you ain't treating yourself right."

She flung out her arms--in dissent and hopelessness.

"No, you ain't," he continued. "You've give him up. You're all alone.
You can't go on--alone. Millie, girl," he pleaded, softly, "I want
you. Come to me!"

She wavered.

"Come to me!" he repeated, his voice tremulous, his arms extended.
"You're all alone. You've lost him. Come to me!"

"Lost him?" she mused. "No--not that. If I'd lost him, Jim, I'd take
you. If ever he looked in my eyes--as if I'd lost him--I'd take you.
I've give him up; but I ain't lost him. Maybe," she proceeded,
eagerly, "when the time comes, he'll not give me up. He loves me, Jim;
he'll not forget. I know he's different from us. You can't tell a
mother nothing about such things as that. God!" she muttered, clasping
her hands, "how strangely different he is. And every day he'll change.
Every day he'll be--more different. That's what I want. That's why I
give him up. To make him--more different! But maybe," she continued,
her voice rising with the intensity of her feeling, "when he grows up,
and the time comes--maybe, Jim, when he can't be made no more
different--maybe, when I go to him, man grown--are you
listening?--maybe, when I ask him if he loves me, he'll remember!
Maybe, he'll take me in. Lost him?" she asked. "How do you know that?
Go to you, Jim? Go to you, now--when he might take me in if I wait? I
can't! Don't you understand? When the time comes, he might ask
me--where you was."

"You're crazy, Millie," the man protested. "You're just plain crazy."

"Crazy? Maybe, I am. To love and hope! Crazy? Maybe, I