It was not a funny one--her baby! It
was not ugly! Or, if it were, she was not fit to be told of it. Her
arm tightened round the warm bundled thing against her. Fiorsen put his
finger out and touched its cheek.
"It IS real--so it is. Mademoiselle Fiorsen. Tk, tk!"
The baby stirred. And Gyp thought: 'If I loved I wouldn't even mind his
laughing at my baby. It would be different.'
"Don't wake her!" she whispered. She felt his eyes on her, knew that
his interest in the baby had ceased as suddenly as it came, that he was
thinking, "How long before I have you in my arms again?" He touched her
hair. And, suddenly, she had a fainting, sinking sensation that she had
never yet known. When she opened her eyes again, the economic agent was
holding something beneath her nose and making sounds that seemed to be
the words: "Well, I am a d--d fool!" repeatedly expressed. Fiorsen was
gone.
Seeing Gyp's eyes once more open, the nurse withdrew the ammonia,
replaced the baby, and saying: "Now go to sleep!" withdrew behind
the screen. Like all robust personalities, she visited on others her
vexations with herself. But Gyp did not go to sleep; she gazed now
at her sleeping baby, now at the pattern of the wall-paper, trying
mechanically to find the bird caught at intervals amongst its
brown-and-green foliage--one bird in each alternate square of the
pattern, so that there was always a bird in the centre of four other
birds.
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