But the angels, the pitying angels, loosened the cords of the rack with their gentle tears.
As the taut threads of the rack slackened, he heard the soft voice of his daughter saying: “But of course, the most important thing is Lila–not that she means a great deal to him now. He doesn’t care much for children. He doesn’t want them–children.”
She turned upon her father and with anguished voice and with all her denied motherhood, she cried: “O, father–I want them–lots of them–arms full of them all the time.”
She stretched out her arms. “Oh, it’s been so hard, to feel my youth passing, and only one child–I wanted a whole house full. I’m strong; I could bear them. I don’t mind anything–I just want my babies–my babies that never have come.”
And then the pitiless fates turned the screws of the rack again and the father burst forth in his vain grief, with his high, soft, woman’s voice. “I wonder–I wonder–I wonder, what God has in waiting for you to make up for this?”
Before she could answer, the telephone bell rang. The wife stepped to the instrument. “Well,” she said when she 231came back. “The hour has struck; the expressman went to Tom for the express charges; he knows the package is here and,” she added after a sigh, “he knows that I know all about it.” She even smiled rather sadly, “So he’s coming out–on his wheel.”
232CHAPTER XXII
IN WHICH TOM VAN DORN BECOMES A WAYFARING MAN ALSO
The father rose. His head was cast down. He poked a vine curling about the porch floor with his cane.