Her face, always expressive, was white and troubled when she opened the door for the Doctor. He understood—he always did. He was one of the few men who are not dense in their comprehension of womankind.
They talked commonplaces for a little while, then he leaned forward and took her cold hand in his.
"Something has bothered you," he said kindly. "Tell me and let me help you."
"You couldn't help me," she answered sadly; "nobody can."
Doctor Norton was not more than thirty-five, but his hair was prematurely grey, and this, together with his kindly manner, often impelled his patients to make unprofessional confidences. Like many another woman, too, Mrs. Howard was strong in the face of opposition, but weak at the touch of sympathy.
"It's nothing," she said. "Ralph is cross nearly all the time, though I don't believe he means to be. He has been that way ever since—ever since the baby died."
She turned her face away, for the little grave in the hollow pulled piteously at the mother's heartstrings when the world went wrong.
"He has always blamed me for that," she went on. "One of the reasons why I wanted to live here, instead of at Fort Wayne, was that I might have my mother to help me take care of the baby. She knew more than I did; was wiser and more experienced in every way, and I thought the little lad would have a better chance. Instead, as you know, he took cold on the way here and did not get well, so his father has never forgiven me."
The tears came fast and her white lips quivered. "Don't, Katherine," he said. It was the first time he had called her by name, and she noted it, vaguely, in the midst of her suffering.
"Don't, Katherine," he repeated. "All we can do in this world is the thing that seems to us the best. We have no concern with the results, except as a guide for the future, and sometimes, years afterward, we see that what seemed like a bitter loss in reality was gain. Some day you may be glad that you lost your boy."