The pain came back, quite astonishing her. She had heard that it was horrible, but had not expected it to be quite so horrible as this. Her mind had only room for one thought—that Louis must not suspect—or, in his anxiety; he would lose grip on himself and make away for Cook's Wall and oblivion. Going into her bedroom she took pencil and paper and wrote a note to Mrs. Twist, who understood the plot and was ready to invent some lost sheep for Jerry and Louis to hunt up.
"Can you come up? I think it's happening to me. Please send Louis away," she wrote, and folded the note into an envelope which she fastened down. That moment she found herself crying out without her own volition. She slammed the door and lay down on the floor inside it, to barricade it against Louis. She heard his steps coming along the verandah and clenched her hands fiercely over her mouth.
"Did you cry out then, dear?" came his voice as he pushed at the door. Feeling an obstruction he pushed all the harder: she could not speak, but he took in at a glance her twisted figure and as he bent over her, shaking with fright, she caught at his hands.
"I thought I'd do it all by myself, but I can't bear it," she gasped.
"Oh my darling," he cried, lifting her in his arms and holding her tight. "How long has this been going on?"
It was some time before she was able to speak. In the bleak aloneness of pain she was very glad of his presence.
"All day—only I didn't want you to know," she said. He groaned.
"For fear it'd bowl me over? Oh God—"
"I'd a plot to send you away. But I'll be glad to know you're not very far! Will you go for Mrs. Twist, Louis? It will be back in a minute."
Kissing her, he ran out across the paddock. In that moment he felt he would cheerfully die for her; it was not her illness that made him so tender, so unusually exalted. He had not it in his nature to regard pain as other than interesting. But the rending thought that she had suffered alone rather than risk his getting drunk—that jerked him. He felt he could beat any weakness that night, as he recalled her eyes, trying to smile at him through pain, her hands as they clung to his for help. He lived a thousand lives during the next few hours until, at two o'clock, he heard the heart-stopping cry of a newborn child that brought stuffy London nights in the slums back to his mind for an instant until Mrs. Twist said, with an air of personal pride, that it was a boy.