"Jake is no child!" Low and bitter the words came; Maud's face was buried deep in her new friend's shoulder. "He is nothing but--a brute!"
"Lord love me!" ejaculated Mrs. Wright. And then very tenderly her hand began to smooth the girl's tumbled hair. "Has he been--that--to you?" she said. "Ah, dear, dear, dear! And what's going to happen, I wonder, when he knows what you're going to give him? No, don't shrink, darling! There's nothing to be ashamed of. Would you be ashamed if God sent an angel to lay a baby in your arms? For it's just that, darling. It is His gift. Aren't you going to thank Him for it? The first is so much the most wonderful. Think, dear, think of the little wee thing that will cling to you, cry to you, depend on only you!"
Maud was shivering violently. She did not lift her head or speak.
Mrs. Wright's hand did not cease to caress and soothe. "I am right, dear, am I?" she asked softly.
And Maud's silence answered her.
Thereafter there came an interval during which the loud patter of the rain was the only sound. Maud's tears had ceased. She sat bowed upon the old woman's breast as though she lacked the strength to lift herself.
But presently, without moving, she spoke. "I suppose I am very wicked; but I don't feel like--that about it. I can't. I don't want it. You'll be dreadfully shocked, I'm afraid. I've never spoken my mind to anyone before. But--the fact is--I've never felt really married to Jake. I don't in my heart belong to him. And that makes everything wrong."
"My dear! My dear!" said Mrs. Wright. "But he is your husband all the same. And you--you are the one woman in the world to him. He loves you as his own soul."
Maud shook her head hopelessly. "Oh no, indeed he doesn't! He doesn't know the meaning of the word. If he did--things would be very different."
"Dear heart, that's just where you go wrong--the beginning and end of the whole trouble," declared Mrs. Wright. "I knew he loved you that night last year at your mother's wedding-party. Why, it was shining in his eyes for all to see. Was he such a dunderhead then that he never told you so?"