A mighty pain racked her, a rending pain that seemed to leave her with reluctance as if it had failed to hurt her enough. Her whole body shivered when the pain passed on, and she had a feeling that it was a personality, so complete was it, a personality that was only waiting in a corner of the room and gathering new strength to rend her again. Delirium touched her with hot fingers. It seemed that her body was like the small triangle of uncut corn round which the reaper relentlessly hums. It was coming again; it would tear the fibers of her again; it was coming; the humming was nearer every moment. In an effort to check the incommunicable experiences of fever, she asked if it was not the lawn-mower that was humming. "No, dear, it's the doctors talking to his lordship." "What about?" The humming ceased, for they gave her chloroform. When she came to herself she lay for a second or two with closed eyes; then slowly, luxuriously nearly, she opened them wide to look at her son. There was nobody. "Where is he?" she gasped, sitting up, dizzy and sick with the drug, but with all her nerves strung to unnatural, uncanny perceptiveness. The dowager was leaning over the bed and begging her to lie down. "What's burning my face?" cried Dorothy. "It must be my tears," her mother-in-law sobbed. "Why are you crying? My boy, where is he? Where is he? Oh, tell me, tell me, please tell me!" The dowager and the nurse were looking at each other pitifully. "Dorothy, my poor child, he was born dead." The mother shrieked, for a pain that cut her ten thousand times more sharply than all the pains of her travail united in a single spasm. "It was a question, dear, of saving your life or losing the baby's." "You're lying to me," Dorothy shrieked. "It was a monster! I know that. It was a monster, and it had to be strangled. Oh, Doctor Lane, Doctor Lane, why did you let them bring another doctor? You promised me you wouldn't." "No, no," said the dowager. "It was a perfect little boy with such lovely little hands and toes. Everything perfect; but his head was too large, dear. It was a question of you or him, and of course Tony insisted that he should be sacrificed." "Where is he? Tony!" Her husband came in and knelt by the bed. "Why did you do that? Why? Why didn't you let me die? He would have been so much better than me. Can't you understand? Can't you understand?" Everybody had stolen from the room to leave them together; but when he leaned over to kiss her she struck him on the mouth. "You only wanted me for one thing," she cried. "Doodles, don't treat me like this. I can't express myself. I never imagined that anything could be so horrible. I was asked to decide. You don't suppose I could have lived with a cursed child who had killed you!" "How dare you curse him?" "Dorothy, we'll have another. Don't be so miserable." Suddenly she felt that nothing mattered. "Will we?" she asked, indifferently. "And we'll go up to town this autumn."