But Martha persisted.
"Mammie, no one could suspect you of anything! Lend me your ring—your wedding ring." Her voice died away.
Emily's voice never faltered. "All right, if you want it." She spoke as if she had been asked for a nickel for the telephone. She put her hands down under the table and tugged away at the ring. Her fingers were larger now than they had been the day Bob put the ring on, in the City Hall in Chicago, in that room where, she still remembered, the spittoons sat in rows. She hadn't taken that ring off for years. She was handing it over now, with another one—a diamond one—which Bob had given her two years ago, at Christmas time, to her deserted daughter. Bob seemed, just then, not so bad a husband, after all. Martha reached over for the rings, closed her fingers about them, and put them furtively away in her purse.
After an interminable afternoon the two of them, with their story ready, came into the doctor's waiting room—a large office which served the patients of several doctors; it was so full that people were standing. Yet as soon as the Kenworthys entered, a woman older than her mother, after one glance at Martha, rose hastily to offer her a place to sit down. The women made a place for Emily, crowding together. Emily didn't even wonder how many, like herself, were dreading a death sentence—a sentence of life. She sat there, in the unspeakable intensity of consciousness of her wound, realizing nothing of the room but the fact that Martha was sitting huddled down in the next sofa, her hat pulled down to hide her shrunken face. Her lips only could be seen, from where her mother sat, but they were not trembling. And they sat there, hour after hour, year after year; they had to sit waiting till almost every one had been called in through one or another of those doors.
The day was over, the night was on them. It was half past six when Emily finally took Martha into the room before the judge. They sat down before her in the full light. She sat behind that little desperately business-like desk, her face half hidden by the lamp-shade. She looked from one to the other of them with shrewd, cynical, prosaic eyes. Emily, as the words came out of her mouth, knew every one of them was being weighed. She was being cross-questioned. What made her think her daughter wasn't strong enough to have a child? What made Emily suppose she was a delicate young woman? The whole slender history of Martha Kenworthy's child illnesses was brought forth and examined. The doctor's very questions seemed to pronounce her a most rugged person. Emily hadn't thought to prepare any lying account of previous illnesses. She hadn't been skilled enough in deceit for that.
The woman got up and turned on pitiless lights. She made preparations; she gave Martha directions, shortly. Emily sat there. She heard her heart pounding.
Once Martha moaned, lying on that white table.
"Don't do that. Don't make that noise."
"You hurt me," Martha apologized.
"Not at all," answered the doctor. She went poking on. Her manner was not ingratiating. If she scented any tragedy before her, she had no sympathy—no one ever need to cry to that woman for help, Emily realized.