"Where is he?" she gasped, sitting up, dizzy and sick with the drug, but with all her nerves strung to unnatural, uncanny perceptiveness.
The dowager was leaning over the bed and begging her to lie down.
"What's burning my face?" cried Dorothy.
"It must be my tears," her mother-in-law sobbed.
"Why are you crying? My boy, where is he? Where is he? Oh, tell me, tell me, please tell me!"
The dowager and the nurse were looking at each other pitifully.
"Dorothy, my poor child, he was born dead."
The mother shrieked, for a pain that cut her ten thousand times more sharply than all the pains of her travail united in a single spasm.
"It was a question, dear, of saving your life or losing the baby's."
"You're lying to me," Dorothy shrieked. "It was a monster! I know that. It was a monster, and it had to be strangled. Oh, Doctor Lane, Doctor Lane, why did you let them bring another doctor? You promised me you wouldn't."