And if the child died, where would it go? To hell if it were not baptized first. That was sure, if anything were sure. Yet if it were not of the elect it would go there anyway, in spite of any baptism, any saintliness of its life. If it lived, it would join the throng of illegitimate children. Of these there were a thousand a year born in New York alone. What a plague of vermin! And what would its future be? It might become a thief, a murderer. It might be sentenced to death for crime. If RoBards continued his career as a judge, he would have many death sentences to pass. His own grandchild might come before him some day. What if he should sentence it to death now? In the good old times of the _patria potestas_ a father could destroy an unworthy child without punishment. Judge RoBards’ jurisdiction as a grandfather was doubly authentic. By one curt act he could protect his daughter from endless misery and frustration, and protect the world from this anonymous intruder and protect this poor little waif from the monstrous cruelty of the world. This snowflake ought to go back to the invisible. Its existence was God’s crime against his child. Yet he could be a god himself and by the mere tightening of his fingers about that little wax-doll throat, fling it back at God, rejected, broken—a toy that he refused to play with. He owed this act to Immy. He had brought her into the world. He loved her. He must save her from being enveloped in the curse of this world’s hell. Let the next hell wait. If God wanted to punish him for it forever—why, what of that? He had committed one murder already and was already damned, no doubt. And even God could not increase infinite torment or multiply eternity. He laughed at the infernal mathematics of that conceit. He felt as haughty as Lucifer challenging Jehovah. Yes, he would force his way into that birth chamber and do his terrible duty. The onset of this madness set him in motion. He had not realized how long he had stood still before that open window and that bleak white desert, where it was too cold to snow, too cold for a wind—a grim cold like a lockjaw. When he turned to pace the floor, his legs were mere crutches; his feet stump-ends. It hurt to walk. He stood still and thought again. Yes, yes! All he had to do was to close his hand upon that tiny windpipe. It would be no more than laying hold of a pen and signing a warrant of arrest, a warrant of death. The same muscles, the same gesture. It would not be murder, simply an eviction—dispossess proceedings against an undesirable tenant, a neighbor that would not keep the peace. He would cheat the newspapers of what they called their rights; but God knew they had enough scandal to print without advertising his family name. The gossips would lose one sweetmeat; but they never stopped yapping. He would not let the men in the clubs call his grandchild a bastard and his daughter a—the word was vomit to his throat.