She turned abruptly and he followed. He knew the signs of Irene’s indignation.
Snugly in bed, in the room that former tenants had fitted as a nursery—but unused now for that purpose, to Irene’s wistful regret—her one sadness—lay the little girl. Irene went up to her, drew back the bedclothes and tenderly exposed her shoulders and bosom.
“Look,” she said.
He bent over; the flesh was livid with bruises.
“I should like to go among them with a flaming sword,” she cried, “and sweep them off the face of the earth.”
“I wish you could, before the child they are expecting is born to them,” he said, grimly.
He sketched his visit. Irene gave but half heed. His first remark had struck a strongly vibrating chord.
“Let us pray to God that it is never born alive,” she said. “To think that such brute-beasts can have a child and—oh, why are they allowed to bring them into the world, and given the most glorious privilege of humanity?”
“The next best privilege is to be able to do what you’re doing now,” said Hugh, consolingly.
“But what is it, after all? It is like trying to stop an avalanche and just getting hold of a handful of snow.”