“Mother will forgive me, mother wants me back, mother will help me get well—if there is any health in me. Mother knows that it wasn’t all my fault—” her thought defended her against that voice.
“Why am I here alone in the night?” the question was repeated.
“I will go home. I will begin again. Men begin again. Oh!...” A sob came from her lips.... “No, no, no!”
She felt with every nerve of her quivering being that in the slow upward climb of sex towards true love and true parenthood woman’s battle is man’s,—felt that God and Nature are now demanding not less of men.
The suffering girl could not put her certainty into words, but in her body and in her soul she knew—she knew.
Suddenly from the opened window of the nearest home she heard above the wind the cry of a baby, the loud, sweet, prolonged, fiercely-demanding cry of a hungry little baby.
A wistful smile twisted her lips as she listened.
Suddenly as the baby’s cry was stopped she put her hands to her bosom and a strange lovely light shone on her face.