“I suppose there’s nothing to be done,” she answered. She turned her face to the wall and lay perfectly still. He waited until he believed her to be asleep and then went softly out. But he was amazed and horrified when, from the darkness of the hall, he saw her sit up in bed and fling her hands above her head, and whisper, with a ferocious distinctness he could not misunderstand:
“Oh, I hate your baby! I hate it! I hate it! I hope and pray it will die before it comes to rob my little girl! I hate your baby!”
He crept downstairs and into his study.
“It’s her condition,” he told himself. “She’s not normal, hardly sane.... She didn’t realise....”
But his joy and pride in the child they were expecting had quite gone. Her distorted passion had tainted his healthy common-sense. A hated, unwanted child! In spite of himself, he began to see it as a monster, began to dread it....
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I
It took a countless number of small details finally to arouse distrust in Mr. Petersen.
In the beginning, there was the roast chicken. Mrs. Hansen, who once more ruled the kitchen, came to him in great distress.
“Mr. Petersen!” she cried, “It’s gone! The whole thing! A beautiful whole roast chicken I put into the ice chest with my own hands this very morning.”