No answer.
She sat down beside him. Like a frightened child she crouched up against him. "All those times of dread come back, their evil faces frowning. Bad fairies! they wait for—for the new-comer with sinister gifts in their hands."
"Don't think such thoughts." He seized her arm roughly.
"No, no; help me not to," she said, shuddering. "But I wish I knew what it had been like to my mother—that first knowledge."
"You may be sure she was glad."
"Yes, yes; not like that hour in the long room, not as we welcomed our—"
"You shall not talk so! to think of it so is a crime." He leaped to his feet. "Do you hear?—a crime."
She seemed to cower there below him on the step.
"And yet," she whispered, "whenever we look at the child we shall remember that hour. He'll wear my shrinking in his poor little face. Oh, what shall I do? In that hour, it may be, I branded my child!"
He sat beside her all night long while she tossed and dozed, and in her sleep pressed both hands to her breast, moaning faintly now and then. The doctor had been sent for at midnight, and came again in the early morning.