It was the first reference she had ever made to her relations with Black Tom O'Connell. Anne wished she had not said anything but it seemed unkind to cut her off.
"Didn't—he—want—one?"
"Well, not so you could notice. He has some of his own, you know, so perhaps that makes a difference. I don't suppose if it had been the third or fourth I'd have been as excited myself as I was. But when I told him, he said 'Good God!' and looked so solemn I was scared to death. Having a baby seemed the most terribly serious thing in the world; and then he began to talk of all the suffering and poverty in the world, just as if we were responsible for it, until I saw the poor little beggar starving to death under my nose. Well, perhaps he might have," Merle added with a shrug. "We were sure in a hell of a mess. We were broke, as usual. The police were watching Tom—it was the first months of the war when they were locking up everybody—and I never knew when Tom went out whether he would come back. I own that I felt pretty solemn myself at times. The world seemed to have gone mad. It's died out now, but you remember that feeling as if the bottom of life might drop out at any moment or the heavens open and sweep us all away? There did seem to be so many needless millions in the world already. And what for? Gunfodder. So—I—had it done."
There was no mistaking Merle's meaning. Anne put the saucepan down on the sink very slowly and stood with her back to Merle. She felt the girl's eyes on her rigid body, but it was beyond her power to move or speak.
"I suppose you wouldn't have done it. Nobody could scare you like that, but I must say that Tom didn't force me. He didn't even suggest it. He just frightened me to death with the responsibility and left the decision to me. But he never said afterwards that he wished I hadn't, although—I got to feel that way myself. I got to thinking about it, seeing it—and although I knew it wasn't really alive, it kind of grew, in the night specially when I was waiting for Tom and didn't know whether he had been arrested or not—staring at me with those big, bulging eyes. You know—kind of seeing nothing and yet knowing all the time what I had done to it. I got woozy——"
"Stop." Anne dragged herself round and, gripping the sink board, stared, white and sick, at Merle. Merle flushed.
"Oh, come off, Anne; you needn't look like that. Thousands of women do it; a million a year, here in the United States alone, and you know it. Because they're too lazy to have them, or want to gad, scores are doing it all the time. Everybody knows it. Besides, it's not nearly so bad to——" Merle hesitated, and then at the loathing in Anne's eyes, threw the words at her, "to abort it before it's really alive at all, as it is to let it come and then see it starve or go to the devil."
"Please don't say any more about it, Merle. I can't stand it."
Just then Roger turned the key in the latch.
"I'm—not blaming you, Merle, but it—makes me sick all over."