When you or I stand, on our day of judgment, to be looked at through the dark medium of our basest moments, may some eye among our contemners discern the angel shape struggling in remorse and anguish behind the bar. “Is this your child?” America demanded of her lover, pointing to it for his identification. The baby, oppressed by the jaunt, under arm, or on lap, according to its mother’s convenience in riding, was covered all over its visible surface by that prickly rash which nurses call “heat.” It was gowned in pink calico, and diffused a sour odor. Ross Carr looked down at it with the slighting masculine eye, which since Saturn has seen little to admire in extremely young offspring. He controlled the muscles of his lips to reply. “I reckon it is.” “Answer me on your word as a man--is this your child?” “Yes. It is.” “He knows it’s his, and he’s got to take care of it and support it--it’s his place to take care of it, not mine,” sobbed Becky, her head wagging. America directed her face to Becky. “Do you intend to turn it off entirely?” “Yes. I do! It’s his, and he ought to keep it!” “But you are its mother!” “I won’t be its mother!” exploded Becky, flinging the ill-kept and wretched infant about on her knees with a vicious grip. “I’ll leave it on a doorstep first!” The child put up a piteous lip and uttered those cries by which bruised infancy protests against tormentors whom it feels but does not know. America stared at the girl; her alabaster face was suddenly drained of horror at the wrong done a woman, and filled with passionate contempt. “Then I’ll be its mother! Give it to me.” She gathered it off Becky’s lap and laid its heat-blotched face against her shoulder. The tiny creature discharged a mouthful of its wretchedness there. America stanched the spot, and made a softer rest for its cheek with her rose-scented handkerchief. Her unconscious sweep of figure in taking the child and standing up publicly with it, thrilled beholders like piercing music or the sight of great works of art. The mother-spirit, which has brooded for centuries over this world--the passion to foster and protect and train--shone white and large in her face. She was that fair impersonation men call the Goddess of Liberty, holding the outcast to her breast. She was Mother Mary, with a reminder of the Heavenly Infant in her arms. No one remonstrated or spoke a word to her as she moved from the room. Becky Inchbald, pulling her shaker over her face, went out and mounted her horse. America was at the top of the stairs when she heard Ross Carr speak hoarsely at the foot. She stood looking at him over the balustrade. The baby was quiet. “One word, America!--It’s all over--between us?” He could hear his watch ticking; and outdoor sounds buzzed in his ears. “No,” answered America. “It is not all over between us.” Ross Carr dropped his groping hand on the stair newel, his next sentence also coming in fragments.