"It's the old story," she said—"some girl in a fix and trying to get pa to help her. It makes me sick, positively sick."
"A fix?"
"Every once in a while some poor creature comes begging pa to break the law and help her. It gets him wild. Any girl who doesn't want her child is a monster and every girl in trouble a vicious sinner. This poor little thing didn't look seventeen; I couldn't quite understand her. A Pole, I think. Something about the beach at Coney Island. A man she'd never seen before or since. My mother in her righteousness! Her terrible, untempted righteousness. Her easy righteousness. The law in its righteousness. It can be just as wrong and horrible to have children as it can be sublime. What right has that little underbred girl to bring an illegitimate life into the world? The law doesn't provide for the illegitimate child. Why should it provide for its birth? What right had my father to withhold his help? … There are worse crimes than taking human life; one of them is to give life under such conditions."
"You mean, Alma, there's a way not to—a way out?"
"Why, you poor baby! Of course there is if you see to it in time. That is, during the first few weeks."
"How—many?"
"Oh, five or six at the outside. Go back to bed, girl; you'll catch your death. O Lordy! such is life!" And went out.
For the third time in her life, Lilly fainted that night, standing shivering in her nightdress for a second after Miss Neugass had left. In a room barely wide enough to contain her length she dropped softly against the bed, and, her fall broken, slid the remaining distance to the floor.
After a while the chill air from the open window revived her and she crept shudderingly into bed.