“But how can it ever get out?” he cried suddenly with wildness.
“It will get out,” the doctor answered, smiling. “Wait—you will see.”
“But the baby will be dead!” he panted.
“It is very much alive,” replied the other. “I can hear its heart beating plainly.”
All the while Thyrsis had never really believed in the child—it was too strange an idea. He could think only of the woman, and of her endless agony. Every minute seemed a life-time to him—the long morning had come and gone, and still she lay in her torment. He was sick in body, and sick in soul; she had exerted the strength of a dozen men, it seemed to him.
But now her strength was failing her, he was certain; her moans were becoming more frequent, her protests more vehement. The veins stood out on the doctor’s forehead as he worked with her—muscular, like a pugilist. Gigantic, he seemed to Thyrsis—terrible as fate. Time and again the girl screamed, in sudden agony; he would toil on, his lips set. Once it was too much even for him—her cries had become incessant, and he nodded to the nurse, who took a bottle from the table, and wetting a cloth with it, held it to Corydon’s face. Then she shouted aloud, again and again—wildly, and more wildly, laughing hysterically; she began flinging her arms about—and then calling to Thyrsis, as her eyes closed, murmuring broken sentences of love, “babbling o’ green fields.” It was too much for the boy—there was a choking in his throat, and he rushed from the room and sank down upon a chair in the hall, crying like a child.
After a while he rose up. He paced the hall, talking to himself. He could not go on acting in this way—he must be a man. Others had borne this—he would bear it too; he would get himself together. It would all be over before long, and then how he would be ashamed of himself!
He went back. “It is the chloroform that makes her do that,” said the young nurse, soothingly. “She is out of pain when she cries out so.”
Corydon was coming back from her stupor; the strife began again. She cried out for its end, she could bear no more. “Help me! Help me!” she moaned.
The head was the size of a saucer now—but each time that she screamed it would go back. Thyrsis stood up to get the strength to grip her hand; her face stared up into the air, looking like the face of a wolf. And still there was no end—no end!