The doctor said, “I cannot tell ye. It is for your husband to hear.” The heart of Rosalie stood still. She put both her hands upon her heart and she said to the doctor, “Tell me. I am strong.” The doctor looked upon Rosalie intently and he said: (he was perhaps dexterously giving her time that she might weld herself) he said, “Ye’ll need be strong. Ye look sensible. Ye’ll need be sensible.” He said, “There’s been before me here another--There’s been a creature here before me. There’s been blackguarrd work here. There’s been--that poor child there...” He told her. She moaned: “O God, be merciful!” That child, as that night went, was in delirium. She seemed to lie upon a bed. She lay, in fact, upon the altar of her gods, of self, of what is vain, of liberty undisciplined, of restless itch for pleasure, and of the gods of Rosalie, a piteous sacrifice to them. You that have tears to shed prepare to shed them now. Or if you have no tears, but for emotion only sneers, do stop and put the thing away. It is intolerable to think to have beside that bed, beside that child, beside that Rosalie, your sneers. It’s not for you, and you do but exacerbate the frightful pain there’s been in feeling it with them. Rosalie was all night with that child. Harry was there upon the other side upon his knees and never raised his head. Benji was there that loved his sister so. Across the unblinded window strove a moon that fought with mass on mass of fierce, submerging clouds as it might be a soul that rose through infinite calamity to God. That child was in much torment. That child was in delirium and often cried aloud. That child burned with a fever, incredible, at touch of her poor flesh, to think that human flesh such flame could hold and not incinerate. That child in her delirium moaned often names and sometimes cried them out. Nicknames that in the sexless jargon of her day and of her kind might have been names of women and might be names of men. Darkie, Topsy, Skipper, Kitten, Bluey, Tip, Bill, Kid. Names, sometimes, more familiar. Once Huggo; once father; once loud and very piteously, “Benji, Benji, Benji, Benji, Benji!” She never once said mother. She calmed and a long space was mute. The moon, its duress passed, stood high, serene, alone. The doctor breathed, “She’s passing.” That child raised her lids and her eyes looked out upon her watchers. Rosalie cried, “Oh, Doda!” That child sighed. “Oh, mother!” There was no note of love. There was of tenderness no note. There only was in that child’s sigh a deathly weariness. “Oh, mother!” That child passed out. They came home in the very early morning. Rosalie was in her working room. She had some things to do. She wrote to Mr. Field a letter of her resignation from Field’s Bank. She only wrote two lines. They ended, “This is Final. I have done.”