She wanted to scream. Her tongue and lips were wool. She knew that far away, out of the darkness which did not belong to her, something warm and moist slipped. The child emerged from the blackness in which she was still caught. The child passed from the torture which went on without it. * * * * * "Mrs. Farley, it's over. You can rest." The nurse leaned close. Winnie felt the nurse's breath, dry and hot as a sirocco, blown on her cold ear across the dark. What did it matter to the rocking dark that the child was born? Her wrists floated. Her heart strained and gathered itself as if for its most profound joy. But the great joy to which she opened, slowly transfigured itself. An ugly and living shudder ran through her. The joy refused her. At the instant in which she knew it entirely, she ceased to be. Her heart stopped beating. She fell back, noiseless. The nurse, with the child in her lap, sat by a porcelain basin cleansing the baby with a big sponge. Dr. Beach called her and she laid the baby in the new crib while she went quickly for Mrs. Farley. When the nurse had returned and Dr. Beach was working, attempting to revive Winnie, Laurence came into the room. He saw the excitement and helplessness of the doctor. Once Winnie's eyelids seemed to twitch. Then Laurence leaned forward with a curious unconscious eagerness. He asked for only one thing. He wanted to know that Winnie was dead. Stealthily and suspiciously, he watched the corpse, hating the small relaxed body that had tortured him with its suffering. He wanted to know that there was no more pain. PART IV Mrs. Farley had taken the baby, with its crib, into the nursery. She was seated in a low rocker, crying by the nursery fire, when May woke up. Roused from sleep by her grandmother's sobs, May saw Mrs. Farley, with trembling lips that seemed withered by grief, lifting her head and swaying her thin body, one knotted hand clutched to her breast as if in unendurable pain. "What's the matter, Grandma Farley?" May asked when she could endure the mystery no longer. She was like an inquisitive little animal, expecting to be beaten, but determined to gain its end. Mrs. Farley pretended not to have heard. She was ashamed because she did not know how to explain her suffering to the child. "Is--is anybody sick, Grandmother? Is Mamma worse?" May asked again with piping persistence. She saw the crib and some vagueness in it curiously agitated. "What's that?" she said excitedly. Mrs. Farley rose stiffly, her figure half black, and half shining, against the firelight. Her spectacles glinted where they were fastened on her untidy flannel waist. Her old black skirt was glossed green where the fireshine caught in its folds. The gray down on her cheek glistened like a mist. Separate strands of her hair were threads of metal, hot and bright on her head.