“Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie—” Andora, still on her knees, continued to hold back the packet, her pale face paler with anger and compassion. “Lizzie, they’re the letters I used to post for you—the letters he never answered! Look!”
“Give them back to me, please.”
The two women faced each other, Andora kneeling, Lizzie motionless before her, the letters in her hand. The blood had rushed to her face, humming in her ears, and forcing itself into the veins of her temples like hot lead. Then it ebbed, and she felt cold and weak.
“It must have been some plot—some conspiracy!” Andora cried, so fired by the ecstasy of invention that for the moment she seemed lost to all but the esthetic aspect of the case.
Lizzie turned away her eyes with an effort, and they rested on the boy, who sat at her feet placidly sucking the tassels of the bag. His mother stooped and extracted them from his rosy mouth, which a cry of wrath immediately filled. She lifted him in her arms, and for the first time no current of life ran from his body into hers. He felt heavy and clumsy, like some one else’s child; and his screams annoyed her.
“Take him away, please, Andora.”
“Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie!” Andora wailed.
Lizzie held out the child, and Andora, struggling to her feet, received him.
“I know just how you feel,” she gasped out above the baby’s head.
Lizzie, in some dark hollow of herself, heard the echo of a laugh. Andora always thought she knew how people felt!