She sat in a rocking-chair near the bed, her gaze still on the child's face. A sudden breeze fanned the shades of the windows inward. She locked her hands in her lap, her thin, blue-veined, irresolute hands in a lap of stone. "'Nothing counts that we do for ourselves,'" she quoted, uncompromisingly. "If I refuse I'll not be acting for myself, but for her--my baby--my darling baby! Charlie loved her enough to undertake her rescue, and I must help him carry it through. Yes, I can do that conscientiously. It would kill her to learn that her father was a convict. She couldn't grow up under it. It would blight her whole existence. At school she would hear it. In society it would be whispered behind her back and thrown in her face. Oh, it can't be! God would not allow it to be. He would not allow the sins of a father to fall on shoulders so frail and helpless. Some coarse children would think nothing of it; it would kill my baby. She would brood over it--oh, I know my child! She would hold it in her mind night and day. From what she now is she would become an embittered cynic, soured against life and her Creator. She would never marry. She would not want to bring children into a world so full of pain. And yet, and yet--" Celeste rose and went to a window and stood looking out, peering through the small panes as a hopeless prisoner might. "And yet--justice must be done." Her white lips framed the words which shrank from utterance. "Charlie has _his_ rights, and so has the girl he loves. He undertook our rescue without knowing the cost. He was full of repentance at the time over his trivial mistakes, but now he must see it differently. Shall we drive him to roving again? Would God give my child a happy life at such a cost? Would He blight the lives of two of His children for one--and those two wholly innocent? No, justice must be done. It must! It must! It must! But I can't be her executioner. Why, I'm her mother! She is all I have in the world!" Celeste crept back to the bed and bent over the sleeping child. Her hand went out as if to caress the white brow, but her fingers lifted only a fragrant lock of hair, and this she bent and kissed as soundlessly as the sunlight's vibration on the rug-strewn floor. The next day was Sunday. Leaving her husband and his uncle smoking over their papers in the dining-room, her child in the care of a maid, Celeste slipped away unnoticed. She did not often attend church, but she was going to-day. Why, she could not have explained. It was as if a building with a spire and chimes, altar and surpliced clergyman, white-robed choristers and bowed suppliants, would help her make the decision that a long, sleepless night had withheld. She felt faint as she entered the family pew and bowed her head, for she had taken little nourishment since her travail began. Somehow her own death seemed a near thing, but she did not care. There were other things so much worse than mere death.