Clinging to the little one with feverish arms she hastened along, weeping to herself, laughing to herself, full of a wild joy that had no remorse, no qualms of any kind, and neither looked before nor after. It was motherhood--the most divine, the most devilish, the most tender, the most terrible, the most sweet, the most sublime, the most savage of all the passions of the heart.
Reaching home at last she found the house silent, but every room wide open, as if lately ringing with the noise of hurrying feet. Creeping up-stairs with her precious burden she got safely back to her room, and instantly locked the door behind her. She laughed as she did so, thinking how Anna and Aunt Margret would follow her and find themselves defeated.
Then she undressed and got back into bed and for one long, heavenly hour she gave herself up to the delight of having her child--to hold it, to nurse it, to fondle it, to kiss it, and to devour it with all her senses. The little creature had slept during its journey through the town, but now it awoke, and lay quiet by its mother's side while she ran her hungry hands over its tiny body and put its clinched fists and its feet one by one into her mouth.
After a while the child tired and began to cry, whereupon Thora remembered for the first time that she had left its feeding-bottle behind her. She tried to hush it, but it would not be hushed, and then a sudden thought, a blind impulse of maternity, came to her, and she put the little one to her breast. The child clung to it and was quiet, and the milk, which had never come until now, instantly began to flow.
It was the crowning miracle of that joyous hour, a physical rapture such as Thora had never known before.
After that a more tender spirit stole over her, and she looked lovingly down at the child in her bosom and kissed it again and again, and said, "God bless my baby."
Then in a voice so weak and silvery that it was like a voice descending from the sky, she began to sing the child to sleep:
"Sleep, baby, sleep,
Angela bright thy slumbers keep,
Sleep, baby, sleep."
The child slept, and even while she sang Thora became aware of alternate waves of heat and cold going over her. A vague, broken, delirious consciousness came and went, and people seemed to be entering and leaving the room. First it was Helga, then it was Oscar, and finally it was Magnus. Helga was taking the child out of the bed and Oscar was helping her, and she was trying to cry out and could not, when Magnus appeared in the doorway.
At one moment she thought she was dead, and people were talking around her. They were all strangers, chiefly women whom she had seen going into the Salvation Shelter. "She's gone, poor girl," said some one, and somebody else said, "So much the better--the poor thing's troubles are over." "They say she tried to make away with herself," said one. "And what wonder?" said another. "There was no place left for her in this world." "Nobody can say she didn't love her husband," said a voice at her feet. "That was the pity--he loved her sister," said a voice above her. "Perhaps that was why she thought of taking her life--to leave him free--perhaps to make him happy?" "Well, she did wrong by Magnus, but we all know who killed her." And then everybody said in chorus, "He'll get his reward, he'll get his reward," and she was sorry for Oscar.