THEN, one evening, Richard More came home from the office and found a new look in his house. He knew it, even before he caught a glimpse of a nurse’s white cap hurrying through the lower hall and before the doctor met him at the foot of the stair.

“I am just going,” said the doctor.

“Going—?” Richard caught himself. “Has it come?”

The doctor smiled at him—at the ignorance and youthful credulity of it.

“I shall be back in an hour or two. Everything is going splendidly. Your wife has courage!” And he was gone.

“Courage—Eleanor? Of course she had courage! She was made of it. What did the doctor know about Eleanor’s courage?” He hurried up the stairs... the fleeting sense of life in his quick steps.

She turned to him with the little upward twist of her lip. “It’s all right, Dickie!”

There was no mystery, no courage—only Eleanor’s competent look as if there were dusting to be done, and men-folks were better out of the way.... And yet, behind it, he had a sense that she withdrew to some high place, to a remote, inaccessible cliff, and looked down on him with wide eyes.

He wandered miserably about the house; a part of the night he slept, and part of it he spent at the telephone, sending orders for the doctor and nurse, and answering the door-bell when the response came.... All through the early hours he longed fiercely for the arrival of William Archer. Then, as the night went on, he lost interest in William Archer and his coming, and would have welcomed Annabel.... And he cast aside even the thought of Annabel. He longed only for an end to the misery.... And when at last the doctor said in businesslike tones, “A fine girl, Mr. More!” he only blinked at him, and his tousled hair took on a more rebellious twist.

“A fine girl! What of it!... What had girls to do with this?”

“A fine girl” did not connect herself, in any vague way, with Annabel or with life.... Probably a new girl for the kitchen....! Well, they needed a girl! They needed a dozen girls!

He wandered out miserably—and the doctor followed him with a quick look and something in a glass.

“Here, drink this!”

And Richard drank it—and looked at him stupidly. Something was happening inside his brain—things were growing more settled and luminous. A smile wreathed his face.

“It’s a girl, is it?” he cried jubilantly.

The doctor nodded.

Richard More clapped him on the shoulder.

“Good work!” he said.

The doctor removed the shoulder gently. He turned toward Eleanor’s room.

“You can stay outside,” he said as he disappeared. “We shall not need you for a while.”

And Richard sat down in his parlor on the small sofa and took his tousled head in his hands and held it fast. He may have dozed a little.

When he got up and straggled to the kitchen, he found a strange woman making a fire in the range.

She had finished polishing off the top of the range and held a black cloth in her hand. The hand was very black, he noticed.

He nodded to her and went past her to the door and opened it. The world looked very fresh. The earth and the grass on either side the path were very dark and moist—as if they had been dipped in some curious fluid, and the sky had a kind of luminous quality—swelling with fulness and a freshness of light.

Richard More looked up at it and drew in a deep breath—and with the intake he understood, for the first time, that all men see the earth new-washed one morning in their lives. He had a sense of kinship with the earth and with every one living on the earth.

When he turned back to the kitchen, the woman was putting the black cloth under the sink.

“It’s a girl!” he said. He tried in vain to keep the morning out of his voice.

“Glory be to God!” said the woman. She turned promptly and straightened her back and beamed on him.

He held out his hand to her and grasped the blackened one. He did not suspect how many young fathers had shaken hands with cooks.

His experience was unique. He looked about the kitchen with satisfaction.

Ellen Murphy brought some broth and put it on the gas-range.

He watched her with kindling eyes.

He had been familiar with his kitchen before. But it had not looked to him just as it looked now.... That broth she was heating was for his wife... to keep her alive. He looked at a row of saucepans with intelligent gaze.

Ellen Murphy tested the broth and went from the room, carrying it with careful hand.

He watched her disappear and looked about the homelike room.... She was going to feed Eleanor. Just outside the door was the ice-box, where he had blundered in the night, breaking up the ice, crushing it for the doctor—they had told him to hurry—hurry!... Ages ago it seemed. And now Eleanor was to have her broth. She was being fed.... Those stew-pans over there were for her. Somehow out of this kitchen, she was to be fed, his baby was being fed—they were all being fed!