“You are not going to give me an anesthetic, are you?” she said evenly.
“Why did you ask that?”
“Because I wish to feel and know the pain and glory of it all.”
“You don't wish to take it?”
“Not unless you say I should.”
“What a wonderful patient you are, child! What a beautiful spirit!” He looked at her intently. “Well, I'm older and wiser in experience than you. I'm glad you added that clause `unless you say I should.' I'm going to say it. After all my talks to you on our return to the truths and simplicity of Nature you are perhaps surprised. You needn't be. I'm going to put you into a gentle sleep. Nature will then do her physical work automatically. I do this because our daughters are the inheritors of the sins of their mothers for centuries. The over-refinement of nerves, the hothouse methods of living, and the maiming of their bodies with the inventions of fashion have made the pains of this supreme hour beyond endurance. This should not be. It will not be so when our race has come into its own. But it will take many generations and perhaps many centuries before we reach the ideal. No physician who has a soul could permit a woman of your physique, your culture and refinement to walk barefoot and blindfolded into such a hell of physical torture. I will not permit it.”
He walked quietly into his laboratory, prepared the sleeping powders and gave them to her.
Six hours later she opened her eyes with eager wonder. Aunt Abbie was busy over a bundle of fluffy clothes. The Doctor was standing with his arms folded behind his back, his fine, clean-shaven face in profile looking thoughtfully over the sun-lit valley. There was just one moment of agonized fear. If they had failed! If her child were hideous—or deformed! Her lips moved in silent prayer.
“Doctor?” she whispered.
In a moment he was bending over her, a look of exaltation in his brown eyes.