"My baby isn't dead!" she cried. "You lie! You always lie!" Her flashing eyes looked into his and caught something there, at once brutal and kind, that awed her and made her impotent and acquiescent. She lowered her own eyes in tired despair.
"All right," she said wearily. "My baby is gone. What shall I do now?"
"Your husband is much better. All he needs is rest and kindness. But you must go to him and tell him what's happened."
"I suppose you think you made him better," said Luella bitterly.
"Perhaps. He's nearly well."
Nearly well—then the last link that held her to her home was broken. This part of her life was over—she could cut it off here, with its grief and oppression, and be off now, free as the wind.
"I'll go to him in a minute," Luella said in a far-away voice. "Please leave me alone."
Doctor Moon's unwelcome shadow melted into the darkness of the hall.
"I can go away," Luella whispered to herself. "Life has given me back freedom, in place of what it took away from me."
But she mustn't linger even a minute, or Life would bind her again and make her suffer once more. She called the apartment porter and asked that her trunk be brought up from the storeroom. Then she began taking things from the bureau and wardrobe, trying to approximate as nearly as possible the possessions that she had brought to her married life. She even found two old dresses that had formed part of her trousseau—out of style now, and a little tight in the hips—which she threw in with the rest. A new life. Charles was well again; and her baby, whom she had worshipped, and who had bored her a little, was dead.