Edwin thought of many things. It seemed to him that his mind burned clear as frosty starlight lighting forgotten memories of his childhood. He thought of his own mother. He wondered if she had lain like the woman on the bed on the night when he was born. He wondered if it had been in the least like this, and whether another doctor, whose name he did not even know, had sat by the fireplace in the little room at Halesby waiting and seeing his own life stretched out before him in this light of perilous clarity. He thought of St. Luke’s—of a thousand small things that had lain submerged for years and now appeared unbidden. The strangeness of his own experience, the elements of linked circumstance that had combined to twist his life into its present state and make him what he was. He thought of his father, with an unusual degree of charity, realising that this man too was no more than a slave of the same blind influences driven hither and thither in spite of his innate goodwill. Edwin was ashamed to think that he had been angry with him. In his present mood it seemed to him an unreasonable thing that one should be angry with any human creature. Pity . . . yes, and love—but never anger. So, like a devotee in a Tibetan lamasery, he saw his fellow creatures, his father, himself, the midwife, and the woman on the bed, bound helpless to the revolving wheel which is the earth. And the earth seemed very small beneath the stars. . . . At two o’clock in the morning the handsome girl from downstairs, who was the patient’s sister, came softly into the room and asked the midwife if she would like a cup of tea. The patient blinked at het with red eyes. “How is it going, Sally?” said the sister. “Oh, it’s all right. I suppose it’s got to be worse before it’s better,” she said, with a laugh. “Ask the doctor if he’ll have some tea too.” Edwin accepted gratefully. It was harsh stuff that had been standing on the hob downstairs for some hours already. Mrs. Perkins was easily persuaded into doctoring hers with a tablespoonful of brandy from the bottle that is a regular constituent of the working class _layette_. The sister sat at the foot of the bed and stared lazily at Edwin. “You look tired, doctor,” she said. Edwin admitted that he had had a biggish day. “You ought to get a bit of sleep,” said the dark girl. “Sorry there bain’t no spare beds in the house; but you can turn in with me if you like.” She looked so daringly provocative that Edwin had a horrible suspicion that she meant it; but it was evidently the sort of joke that Greville Street understood, for the patient on the bed cried, “Ethel, you are a cough-drop, you’ll make the doctor blush,” and Mrs. Perkins rocked with laughter until she spilt her tea. “Well, why should you have all the fun, Sally? It isn’t every day we get a nice young man in the house.” “_Fun_ . . .,” said the patient wryly. “You’ll know all about this sort of fun some day.”