"You needn't try to make me think any different," she interposed wearily, sinking into the chair the doctor placed for her; "'cause you can't. I've been over everything you could say. All the way down here I didn't have anything to do only just to think and think. And I see now—such lots of things that I never saw before."
"But, why—how do you know—what made you think he has—left you?" stammered the doctor.
"Because he's ashamed of me; and—"
"Oh, Mrs. Denby!"
"You don't have to say anything about that, either," said Mrs. Denby very quietly. And before the dumb agony in the eyes turned full upon him, he fell silent.
"There ain't any question as to what has been done; it's just what I'm going to do," she went on wearily again. "He sent me ten thousand dollars—Burke's father did; and—"
"John Denby sent you ten thousand dollars!" exploded the doctor, sitting erect.
"Yes; a check. I've got it here. He sent it for a playday, you know," nodded Mrs. Denby, shifting the weight of the heavy baby in her arms. "And—and that's why I came to you."
"To—to me," stammered the doctor, growing suddenly alertly miserable and nervous again. "A—a playday! But I—I—that is—how—"
"Oh, I'm not going to take the playday. I couldn't even think play—now," she choked. "It's—" Then in a breathless burst it came. "Doctor, you can—you will help me, won't you?—to learn to stand and walk and talk and eat soup and wear the right clothes and finger nails and hair, you know, and not say the wrong things, and everything the way Burke's friends do—you and all the rest of them—you know, so I can be swell and grand, too, and he won't be ashamed of me! And is ten thousand dollars enough to pay—for learning all that?"