"I won’t. There’ll be a child to look after and feed. Just to work in a factory till I’m too old, and then—I don’t know—die in the poorhouse, I guess!"
"There’s lots of things might happen, Angie. Maybe you’ll marry. There’s men that would be willing to over-look——”
"Well, I don’t want ’em. I’m through with men."
"Then maybe you’ll get on fine in some kind of business."
"No chance of that! I haven’t any education. I’m too ignorant. Don’t try to make up things to comfort me; I know how it’ll be."
But still she didn’t, she couldn’t, want to die. No matter how terrible her future looked, her strong spirit clung to life, even the most repulsive life. It wasn’t that she feared death, but she resented it. It was the complete defeat, the final outrage.
As her time drew near, she began greatly to dread dying. She would lie by the hour, thinking of death, in a sort of silent fury.
III
At last it came upon her, one July morning, that most shocking and insensate of nature’s cruelties. Her mother sat by her in fatalistic patience, knowing well that there was no escape, no alleviation. There was a doctor whom Mrs. Kennedy had summoned—not the noble and kindly physician of Angelica’s romance, but an indifferent and callous one accustomed to the poor and their profitless agonies. He was very cheerful. He was able to look down upon that young face distorted in brutal anguish, and smile.
"Nothing to be done now," he said. "I’ll look in again in an hour or so."