" Give me "the sixty-eight"--more body.'
After a time, Winton went upstairs. Waiting in the outer room he had a
return of his cold dread. "Perfectly successful--the patient died from
exhaustion!" The tiny squawking noise that fell on his ears entirely
failed to reassure him. He cared nothing for that new being. Suddenly he
found Betty just behind him, her bosom heaving horribly.
"What is it, woman? Don't!"
She had leaned against his shoulder, appearing to have lost all sense of
right and wrong, and, out of her sobbing, gurgled:
"She looks so lovely--oh dear, she looks so lovely!"
Pushing her abruptly from him, Winton peered in through the just-opened
door. Gyp was lying extremely still, and very white; her eyes, very
large, very dark, were fastened on her baby. Her face wore a kind of
wonder. She did not see Winton, who stood stone-quiet, watching, while
the nurse moved about her business behind a screen. This was the first
time in his life that he had seen a mother with her just-born baby. That
look on her face--gone right away somewhere, right away--amazed him. She
had never seemed to like children, had said she did not want a child.
She turned her head and saw him. He went in. She made a faint motion
toward the baby, and her eyes smiled. Winton looked at that swaddled
speckled mite; then, bending down, he kissed her hand and tiptoed away.
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