Sharp specks of light flecked the worn green shades that darkened the windows. The room faced east and at four o'clock Winnie watched the sun set over the dim purple housetops. Then it was a flat white metal disk with a harsh rim of whiter fire. But half an hour later it was only a pinkish welter around which floated wispy clouds that looked burning hot, like feathers dipped in molten ore. By five o'clock everything had disintegrated in the lilac dust of twilight. The doctor advised Winnie that, in order to avoid a premature confinement, she must move about as little as possible. But she was so bored when she was alone that she sometimes put on a fancy house gown, powdered her nose, and went downstairs. Every one, by an exaggerated consideration, seemed determined to make her aware of her state. As she walked she was obliged to sway grotesquely backward to balance the weight she carried before her. When she passed the long mirror in the little-used parlor, and saw herself hideous and inflated, she burst into tears. Her mother was often at the house, and there was nothing so sickening to Winnie as the sweet platitudes which Mrs. Price was constantly uttering. "The dear little baby!" Mrs. Price would say. "What a wonderful thing it is to be a mother!" Her flat face was alight with the sickish reflection of a memory that was growing dim. Mrs. Farley, with no more animation, was less refined, and Winnie could say things to the mother-in-law which the mother would not have listened to. For some reason it satisfied Winnie to discuss her condition with irrelevant vulgarity. She hated her family for dedicating her to this sordid thing every minute of her life. There was something false in their heightened regard of her which existed because she was sick and weak. She had become accustomed to feeling the baby move in her. Its life had become definite and independent of her. It lay in her, complete, as though it had no right there. Yet her mother, in particular, talked as though the child were a hope and a wonder still in dream. As though they must keep their hearts fixed upon it and pray it into being. It seemed to Winnie that her life was being taken away and given to the child. * * * * * There was almost a frenzy about Mrs. Farley's attention to work. She got up at half past five in the morning, and in the still gray dawn when the grass in the back yard was silver with rime she took out the ashes in a big bucket and emptied them into the bin in the alley. The gray dust settled on her uncovered hair, but she did not seem to know it. Stiff locks, sticky with dirt, hung about her grimed face. Her flannel waist was half out of the band of her draggled skirt. Her hands, crimson at the knuckles, and grained with the filth of labor, clutched the ash can stiffly.