“The doctor says this is the best of all—the coming back in the fresh evening air.”
She sat up in her place then, and Noel could see that she kept her hand upon her baby’s pulse.
“Do you ever sing now?” he asked abruptly.
She shook her head.
“No—except little songs to baby.”
“I heard while I was in Europe of your making an immense hit in the amateur opera. Why did you stop?”
“I was forced to. Those people compelled me. I don’t know why, but they looked on me as something apart from them. The women were strange and unfriendly, and the men—I don’t know,” she broke off confusedly, “but it is all hateful to me to think of. I was glad to get away from them. The night of the opera was the last time. Oh, if my baby will get well,” she said, bending to touch his thin hair with her lips, “I will never need anything but him. You believe in prayer—don’t you? Will you pray to God to make him well?”
Noel promised with a willingness that seemed to comfort her. Absorbed in the child once more, she soon seemed to forget him and silence fell between them again. It was scarcely broken during the whole return trip. She seemed to have nothing to say to him. When she spoke to him at all her thrilling voice dropped to a whisper, and it was always to give some information about the baby. Once she said with fervent interest, “He is asleep,” and once she told him that his skin felt cool and natural. This was all. It must be owned that Noel didn’t think very lovingly of that poor atom of humanity as he sat there. It was the baby that had caused her to be in this false position, which he felt so keenly, and it was terror for the baby which brought that suffering look to her face. And yet something of the same feeling was in his own breast as he palpitated at the thought of this little creature’s dying and breaking the heart of its mother, who plainly loved it with the absorbingness of the first passion she had ever known.
When they reached the wharf it was quite dark, and the electric lights and publicity of the place made Noel shrink so from the thought of exposing the girl, in her suffering, to the gaze of such men and women as he saw about him, that, without consulting her, he called a carriage and helped her into it, following and seating himself opposite her. She protested at first, but he said: