"I ask nothing else," she pleaded. "If anything could have held me true to the old life--if anything could have bent me to your will, and starved the soul out of me, it would have been the child. I tell you something has gone out of me here"--she struck herself again--"and I shall die if I can not hold her in my arms again. You are a man; you do not understand. You can find it in your heart to laugh at me, because I was able to leave her; but she is flesh of my flesh, and I can not tear her from me. Let me see her; let me know that she is well; let me see her smile into my eyes again; let me kiss her! Man, hear the rain and the wind; I have come through them these many weary miles, and I will go through them again. Let me see her, if only for a few minutes, and I swear to you, by the God that gave her to me, that I will go away, and trouble you no more! Only let me ease my hunger." She was down on her knees at his feet, stretching out her hands to clasp them; he backed away to avoid her. "You did not think of all this before," he said, slowly. "Where is the man?" "Dead!" she said, in a low voice. "Ah! I thought so; I should scarcely have seen you here again had he been alive. And what do you think is to become of you now?" He asked the question with the bitter savagery of one who sees something that has wronged him in the dust at his feet, helpless, and is gladdened by the sight. "I do not care," she said. "It does not matter; can't you understand that nothing matters? But my child, my baby; that has been the bitter thing through all. Do you think that I would plead to you as I do now for anything else? Do you think that I would kneel at your feet in any other cause?" The man began to pace up and down the room again, grasping his strong, square chin by one hand, and bending his brows in thought. The woman drew herself slowly to her feet and watched him intently. After a moment the man faced about, leaned his back against the wall, folded his arms, and looked down at her. "Hysterics, or appeals, or tears are useless in a matter of this kind," he said; "let us look at it clearly and dispassionately, as though it lay outside ourselves. You have no right here; your part in my life and in the child's is played out and done with--do you understand that? You cut yourself off from it all long ago; I have set myself to forget your very name, and I do not suppose that the child can remember you. From the standpoint of justice and morality, you have simply ceased to exist; you're outside the pale--a lost, abandoned woman. Do you understand _that_?" The woman did not answer; she stood rocking herself to and fro, like a creature in pain, with her hands pressed tightly to her eyes.