"The child?" Faintly Cynthia repeated the words and her bewildered mind struggled with them and fitted them, somehow, into the Hopes' cabin, and that scene where Marcia Lowe arraigned Liza.
The door of the sitting-room opened and Lans entered noiselessly. Marian Spaulding's back was toward it and in her slow, vague way Cynthia was wondering why he should be there just then. The last shielding crust of childhood was breaking away from Cynthia—her womanhood, full and glowing, was being fanned to flame by the appeal this strange woman was making upon it. Cynthia, the girl who had been caught in the net, had no longer any part in this tragedy—she was free!
"The child?" she again repeated, "what child?"
"Why, Lans's and mine!"
Then Cynthia stood up quite firm and straight. She looked full and commandingly at Lans who was leaning, deadly white, against the door he had closed behind him.
"Here is Lans, now," she said, more to the haggard man than to the pale woman.
It was as if, in those four simple words, she appealed to the best and finest of him to deal with this fearful responsibility which was his, not hers. In that instant she relinquished all the forced ties that held him and her—she cast him off superbly at this critical time of his life; not bitterly or unkindly—but faithfully.
Marian Spaulding turned and rose unsteadily to her feet, then with outstretched arms, she staggered toward Lans. Over her pitiful, wan face a flood of passion and love surged—her lonely, desperate soul claimed its own at last!
"Lans! Lans!" she cried, falling into his arms; "you will understand! you must understand—and there is—our child!"
Lansing Treadwell held the little form close, but his wide, haunted eyes sought Cynthia's over the head pressed against his breast. Cynthia smiled at him; smiled from a far, far place, helpfully, bravely. She demanded his best of him with confidence, and the unreality of it all held no part in the thought of either.