"But I'll set you in the way of making a mint of money. There's only one thing: you must give up the baby and never let anybody know you ever had it. Don't freeze up and turn away. There are so many ways of disposing of a baby. Send it to a foundling asylum. No questions will be asked. The baby will have the best of care and grow so strong that some rich couple will insist on adopting it, or you could come back when you are married to a rich man and pretend you took a fancy to it and adopt it yourself.
"And there's a lot of other ways to get rid of a baby. You could give it the wrong medicine by mistake, or just walk out and forget it. And there's the river; you could drop it into those black waters. And then you're free—baby would never know. He would be ever so much better off. And you would be free.
"You must be free. You must get a little taste of life. You've a right to it. You lived in a little stupid village all your years—and now you're in the city. Listen to it! It would be yours for the asking. And it gives riches and glory to the pretty girls it likes. But you must go to it as a girl, not as a poor, broken, ragged thing, lugging a sickly baby with no name. Get rid of the baby, my dear. It will die, anyway. It will starve and sicken. Put it out of its misery. That medicine on your wash-stand—an overdose of that and you can say it was a mistake. Who can prove it wasn't? Then you are free. You'll have hundreds of friends, and a career, and a motor of your own, and servants, and a beautiful home. Don't waste your youth, my dear. Invest your beauty where it will bring big proceeds.
"See those lights off there—the big lights with the name of that woman in electric letters? She came to town poorer than you and with a worse name. Now she is rich and famous. And the Countess of—What's-her-name? She was poor and bad, but she didn't let any old-fashioned ideas of remorse hold her back. Go on; get rid of the brat. Go on!"
Hilda clutched the baby closer and moved away to shield her from this grim counselor. When she turned again she was alone. The woman had gone, but the air trembled with her fierce wisdom. She was ruthless, but how wise!
The lights flaring up into the sky carried that other woman's name. Her picture was everywhere. She had been poor and wicked. Now she was a household word, respected because she was rich. She had succeeded.
There came a lilting of music on a breeze. They were dancing, somewhere. The tango "coaxed her feet." Her body swayed with it.
If she were there, men would quarrel over her, rush to claim her—as they had done even in the village before she threw herself away on the most worthless, shiftless of the lot, who got her into trouble and deserted her. It was not her business to starve for his baby.
The baby began to fret again, to squawk with vicious explosions of ugly rage; it puled and yowled. It was a nuisance. It caught a fistful of her hair and wrenched till the tears of pain rushed to her eyes. She unclasped the little talons, ran to the wash-stand, took up an ugly bottle and poured out enough to put an end to that nauseating wail.
She bent over to lift the baby to the glass. Its lips touched her bosom. Its crying turned to a little chortle like a brook's music. It pommeled her with hands like white roses. The moon rested on its little head and made its fuzz of hair a halo. She paused, adoring it sacredly like another Madonna.