"Did—Meredith—think that?" A growing sternness gave Doris hope that she might be saved the details that were like poison in her blood.
"Yes. Protected by—by what is law—George Thornton——"
But Angela raised her thin, transparent hand commandingly. It was as if she were staying the torrents of wrong and shame that threatened to deluge all that she had gained by her life of renunciation and repression—and yet in her clear eyes there gleamed the understanding of the depths.
"May God have mercy upon—the child!" was what she said, and by those words she took her stand between past wrong and hope of future justice. "You must take this child, Doris," she said. "All that you know and feel but make the course imperative and inevitable."
"Sister, how can I—feeling as I do?"
"Can you afford not to? Can you leave it—to such a man?"
"But, Sister, you do not know him. If I should conquer my aversion and take the child, if I succeeded in loving it—he would bide his time and claim it. The law that made this horrible thing possible covers his claim to the child."
Angela drooped back in her chair. She looked old and beaten.
"He must not have the child," she murmured. "It's the only chance for the salvation of Meredith's little girl. He shall not have it!"
Doris bent toward the fire holding her cold, clasped hands to the heat. Suddenly she turned.