THE SICK-A-BED LADY
brutally, clumsily, without preface, without comment: "Honey, you are going to have a child."
For a second her mind wavered before him. He could actually see the totter in her eyes, and braced himself for the final hopeless crash, but suddenly all her being focused to the realization of his words, and she pushed at him with her hands and cried: "No—No—Oh, my God—n-o!" and fainted in his arms.
When she woke up again the little-girl look was all gone from her face, and though the Young Doctor smiled and smiled and smiled, he could not smile it back again. She just lay and watched him questioningly.
"Sweetheart," he whispered at last, "do you're member what I told you?"
"Yes," she answered gravely, "I remember that, but I don't remember what it means. Is it all right? Is it all right to you?"
"Yes," said the Young Doctor, "it's—all—right to—me." Then the Sick-A-Bed Lady turned her little face wearily away on her pillow and went back to those dreams of hers which no one could fathom.
For all the dragging weeks and months that followed she lay in her bed or groped her way round her room in a sort of timid stupor. Whenever the Young Doctor was there she clung to him desper-
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