As soon as it was possible for Mahala to escape from the Moreland residence, she left Ashwater and was driven back to her home. She sought it instinctively as a shelter. It seemed to her that the River Road was unending, that she never again would see the light of her house; and because there was no light when she reached it, she was surprised at last to find that she was there. As a haven she plunged into it and closed the door behind her to shut out the horrors she had witnessed. Predominant in her mind at that minute was the thought that there was nothing in the whole world so dreadful as the power of riches wrongly used. When she thought back to the peace, the happiness, the sheer beauty of her childhood and her home life, it seemed to her quite impossible that such disaster as had overtaken her had been made possible by the unscrupulous power of one man holding his position through the right of riches dishonestly accumulated. After the passing of her father, after the testing of her own strength, she had found that she was sufficient; that she could take care of herself and of her mother as well. There was the possibility that she might find a confident sort of happiness in facing life and making it clothe and provision her that she never would have found had she gone ahead under her father’s sheltering care. She had come dimly to realize that the sheltered life is rather a dull affair. It lacks the spirit, the development, the fraternity that can be found in an equal battle with other men and women for food and shelter.

Then had come the final blow. The Morelands had heaped dishonour upon her. From that hour she had felt that to be vindicated was the only thing that life held in store for her. Now the thing had happened. A thousand people had rushed around her. They had almost crushed her in their desire to touch her, to weep with her, to tell her that they always had known that she never could have been guilty. And there had been an impulse hot in her soul to cry out at them: “Why, then, was I deserted? Why, then, was I left alone? Why, then, did you not rise up and make the thing that happened to me impossible as you have made it impossible for the work of the Morelands upon their fellow men to continue?”

The thing that dazed her, that kept sleep from her eyes, the knowledge of how weary she was from her brain, and sent her wandering from one room to another all through the night, and at the break of day, to the little gold bird that still sang in her window, to the garden, and from the garden to the pigeons, and from the pigeons to the calves, and back again to the cases of her father’s books and to the pictured faces of Mahlon and Elizabeth—the one thing that she found predominant out of the whole matter, the one thing that in the end mounted above everything else, was the fact that Jason had doubted her, that because he doubted her, he had made another woman his wife, the mother of the child that should have been hers.

All the morning Mahala struggled to understand him. She tried to tell her heart that it was because of the scorching humiliations he had endured in his youth, the worst of which she now understood she had never realized. It was the taunts that had been flung at him, the loneliness of his unloved childhood, that had influenced him in his decision not to make any woman concerning whom there was a shadow of doubt, the mother of his child. It was not in the power of a woman like Mahala to gauge the depth of physical passion, to understand the force that drove Jason, in addition to the knowledge that he had found the money where he supposed she had, in some way, managed to have it placed.

Throughout the day, Mahala found her heart crying out achingly and unceasingly over Jason’s lack of confidence in her. She had learned that she could spare the rest of the world. They might think what they pleased. It was Jason alone who mattered. In living over the previous day in her tortured wanderings about the house, through the orchard, in the dead stillness that always precedes a summer storm, she found herself speaking aloud at times. She cried to the walls of her room: “Oh, Jason, I would not have doubted you, if I had seen you take the money myself!”

To the trees of the old orchard she stretched out her arms. She said to them: “If it had been Jason, I’d have known that there had to be some explanation. I’d have felt that anything else might have happened except that he could have been guilty.”

Across the road and down a few rods farther, Jason had reached his home and Ellen in a condition that alarmed her. He had tried to tell her what had happened. He had tried to explain to her, but she had felt that he was speaking as if there were a weight upon his heart and brain that was almost more than he could endure. She had felt that he scarcely realized what he was saying to her. She had tried to feed him; she had wept over him; she had rejoiced with him that there could be no stain upon his name and upon his birthright, and through it all she had seen that he did not hear her, that he did not care for anything she might say or anything she might do. Then she watched him stagger across the road and start toward Mahala’s house.

She stood awhile meditating. She decided that probably there were things that she might do. She ought to go herself and prepare some food. She might give Mahala the comfort of playing with the baby while she worked. She was half in doubt as to whether she should go, and yet she could think of many reasonable excuses. She realized that it was on slow feet that she walked down the road carrying the baby that every day was growing a heavier burden for her slight young shoulders. She was thinking a queer thing as she went along. He was heavier to carry when he was asleep than when he was awake. Asleep, he lay a dead weight on her arms; awake he clung around her neck, he scattered his weight over her chest and shoulders. She was surprised that she had thought this out for herself.

As she reached the gate, she was saying to herself: “He’s a dead weight asleep. He’s not near so heavy when he’s awake!”

Seeing that the front door was closed, she followed the narrow path of hard-beaten earth running around the house. As she came to the big clump of lilacs at the corner, she heard Mahala’s voice cry, “Jason!”

Through the lilac bushes she saw that Jason had fallen at Mahala’s back door. He was lying face down upon the ground, either exhausted or unconscious. She stood one instant in paralysed apprehension. The thing that kept her from movement was the look that was upon Mahala’s face as she crossed the back porch and went to him. Ellen saw that Mahala’s skirts were drawn back and there was a look of scorn and repulsion on her face. It was quite out of the girl’s power to move. She merely stood and stared at them. As she watched, she saw a slow change pass over Mahala. She saw her clenched hands relax; she saw her face soften and break up; she saw a quiver come to her lips and big tears squeeze from her eyes; she saw her fall on her knees beside Jason, and with unsuspected strength, lift and turn his body. She saw Mahala take Jason’s head on her lap and lean over him; she saw her hands slip under his vest and down to the region of his heart. She caught the torn note of agony in Mahala’s voice as she cried to him: “Jason, have the Morelands killed you, too?”

Then Ellen saw Mahala lose her self-control. She stood watching her as she took Jason’s head in her arms and kissed him from brow to lips.

“Jason! Oh, Jason! I understand you now! I know that you’ve always loved me. But you couldn’t, you simply couldn’t, make me the mother of your child when you thought it would be born through me to the suffering you have known. Oh, Jason, it wasn’t fair of you! Your love always has been mine! Your very body is mine! Your child should have been mine!”

As Mahala talked she smoothed his hair, she beat his hands, she tried with her fingers to make his eyes open. Ellen stood and watched. When Jason came to his senses and realized where he was, she saw him look up at Mahala, and then she saw him cover his face with his hands. She watched with a kind of dumb indifference while his body was torn and racked with the deep sobbing that seemed to rend him through and through.

She saw Mahala kneeling before him, looking at him. She heard her saying to him: “I understand now, Jason. I understand you now!”

She watched him struggle to a rising posture. She saw him reach out his hands and help Mahala to her feet. She heard a voice that she did not know crying: “Great God! What have I done? If I had not been a common thing, a vile thing, myself, I might have known!”

Then Mahala laid her hands on his arm. She looked up at him and said quietly: “Square your shoulders, Jason. You’ve got to adjust them to the burden they must carry for the rest of your life. We both know now, but we must finish our lives as if we didn’t.”

Then Ellen saw Jason lean forward. She saw his strong hands reach out. She heard him cry: “Mahala, you know, you always have known, how I love you. If there had been in me the manhood to wait for this hour, would you have been mine?”

She watched Mahala lay both her hands in his. She saw her look at Jason for a long time. She saw the smile of ecstasy that broke over her face. She heard a sweetness she never before had heard in the tones of a human voice as Mahala said: “Why, Jason, when I think it all out, I can’t remember the time when my heart was not fighting your battles for you—when I didn’t love you.”

Standing there, Ellen saw Jason gather Mahala in his arms, lift her clear of the ground, and kiss her face, her hair, her shoulders, even, in a passion of utter despair.

Then Ellen came in for her share of the Moreland tragedy. She turned softly. Lightly she picked her steps around the house. She flashed through the gate; with flying feet she ran back down the road to her home. She had forgotten how heavy the baby was. There seemed to be wings on her feet. When she reached home, she laid him in his cradle because that was the thing she was accustomed to doing when he was asleep. Then she dropped on her knees beside him and caught his little hands, and without caring whether she awoke him or not, she laid them against her face, on her throat, on her eyes, on her hair. At last she found her voice.

She told him: “Your father does not love me. He loves Mahala. He always has loved her. He is really hers and you should be hers. Oh, Baby, tell me what I must do!”

She was kneeling there in a sort of dull lethargy when Jason staggered back home, bowed by the weight of the crucifying revelation that Mahala always had loved him; that he had sacrificed her love; that he had thrown away the beauty of her soul and her body through his doubt of her.

As he stepped inside his door and saw Ellen kneeling beside the cradle, her unheeding head being rumpled and battered by the uncertain hands of the baby, he wondered for a moment. Then he stepped over to her and lifted her to her feet, and then he saw her distorted, pain-tortured face, and there he learned, that in some way, she knew. There was only one way in which she could know. Even then he revealed an inherent fineness. He made no accusation.

He said to her gently: “You felt that you would be needed? You followed me?”

Ellen assented. Then he was speaking again.

“You saw us? You heard what we said?”

She bowed her head in acquiescence.

Jason released her and dropped into the nearest chair, and Ellen sank down again beside the cradle and buried her face in the baby’s clothing. Finally, Jason could endure no more. He went over to Ellen and lifted her up; he helped her to a chair.

With a halting voice and stricken eyes of misery she said to him: “Because you found that pocket book when you were fixing up the house, you thought that in some way she’d had it put there?”

Jason nodded.

In the passion of her agony, she cried at him: “How could you? Any one so delicate, so beautiful—why, I have always known she never could have done it! I couldn’t have loved her if I had thought her a common thief.”

Before the storm of her wrath Jason stood bowed and helpless. She seemed a long way from him, and yet he could hear her voice crying at him: “You loved her. You would work for her, you would take care of her, but you had not the manhood to wait for her hour of vindication!”

Then Jason spoke: “When I found the money hidden in her house, I thought there never could be such a thing as vindication. With my own hands I hid it where it never would have been discovered, waiting for the hour when she should come to me and tell me herself that she had taken it.”

Ellen cried to him: “And now, what are you going to do?”

He looked at her helplessly. The finger she was pointing toward the cradle was shaking but her voice was clear: “You are giving her your love. You have given me your child. What are you going to do?”

So these two souls battled in agony during an evening of that tense stillness which almost always presages heavy storm in the Central States. The elements outside seemed in keeping with the inside strain when a sudden wind sprang up and boiling yellow clouds were driven before it, and heavy black ones took their place. In a short time their world was enveloped in thick darkness, broken by the flash of lightning, the jarring of thunder and dangerous winds.

Worn out at last with nerve strain, Ellen stood up. She faced Jason, crying: “You haven’t been fair. You had no right to make me the mother of your child when you knew in your heart that you didn’t love me. It isn’t truly mine. Martin Moreland robbed Mahala of her people, her home, her wealth. He would have taken her honour if he could. And how much better are you? You have robbed her heart of the love of a lifetime. I heard her say it. And, at the same time, you robbed her of motherhood. Your child belongs to her, not to me! You may take it to her!”

Jason had endured nerve strain almost to the limit. He was at that dumb place where the brain ceases to function for itself. He realized that he might have had Mahala in his home and in his arms if he had kept firm rein on his physical nature and had had Ellen’s faith in her. The foundations of his life had been shaken. It seemed to him that nothing further could happen. He was past thinking clearly for himself. The first thought that came to his muddled brain was one of protest.

“No, Ellen, no!” he said. “That can’t be done! You’re insane to think of it!”

Nerve strain works one way with some people; it works differently with others. First Ellen had cried until she was exhausted. Then she had argued until she could think no further. When she reached her decision, at that time she had meant what she said. She proved the courage of her convictions by lifting the baby from its cradle, wrapping the blanket around it, and thrusting it into Jason’s arms.

She opened the door, and with apparent calmness and deliberation, she said to him: “I have told you until I’m tired. That child does not belong to me. You may take it to its real mother.”

Jason took the baby because he did not know what else to do. But he stood shaking his head.

“You can’t do this, Ellen,” he said to her pleadingly. “For God’s sake, try to understand that you can’t give away your baby!”

Ellen caught up the words. “Give away my baby?” she repeated after him. “It is not I who give it away. It is you. You gave it to me when it belonged to Mahala. I tell you to take it to her!”

She pushed him into the night and closed the door behind him, regardless of the storm into which she was thrusting him. Then Jason’s soul knew fear. He was worn to the marrow with as keen suffering as any man can experience. Every nerve in his body was strained to the breaking point and a ghastly nausea possessed him inside. There was only one rational thought in his head. He must get the baby out of that storm. He must do what he had been told.

He was reeling like an intoxicated man as he staggered blindly down the road through the wildly gathering storm which broke in a torrent as he reached Mahala’s door. He realized that he might have been unable to find her door if her house had not been filled with light. Evidently, she was nervous and afraid. He could see light in every room of the house, and as he stumbled toward it, he could see Mahala’s figure passing from room to room, and he knew that she was alone and that she was afraid.

There was in his heart a fear that his knock might frighten her further, so he called at the same time. He heard her footsteps flying across the floor, and she swung the door wide. He stepped through it, already drenched, with the face and eyes of a stranger, huddling the baby against his breast.

As Mahala closed the door, she stepped back to the centre of the room. Jason held out the bundle to her. He was past the point of trying to screen her. He was past anything except a parrot-like utterance of what he had been told.

With no preliminaries, he said to Mahala: “Ellen saw us this afternoon. She won’t have her baby any longer, because she knows now that I never really loved her. She made me bring it to you. She says, because I love you, my child is yours.”

Mahala held out her palms before her as if to keep back an enemy. Every trace of colour faded from her face. Her eyes stretched their widest in amazement. She had been trying to think, trying to plan, trying to reason, all the afternoon, and the conclusion she had reached was, that to the end of their days, she and Jason must travel different roads, each carrying a burden upon their tortured shoulders, the weight of which they must learn to endure. But here was the climax. This was the worst of all. They might not even be permitted to suffer together. All afternoon she had been thinking: “Ellen has had nothing to do with this. She is perfectly innocent. She must never know.”

And now, smashing as the crash of the lightning outside, she was facing the terrible knowledge that Ellen did know, and that she had practically lost her reason through that knowledge. Her heart was primitive like the heart of every other woman. She had seen her man, she had loved him, she had taken his head on her breast, she had given him all she had to give. And through youth and inexperience, through willingness to believe, she had believed that she was having all that he had to give in return. Now she knew that she had had nothing. She had merely been an instrument. This knowledge had driven her to frenzy.

And this was the thing that Mahala now had to face. Through the months of torture that she had experienced, striking her first in the heart, then in the brain, and then physically, she had learned what this must mean to Ellen.

She could only cry: “Impossible! Quite impossible!”

Jason advanced toward her, holding out the baby. It had awakened with the flashes of lightning and the jarring of the thunder. Throwing up its little arms, it pushed the blanket back, revealing its face, the soft, curling brown hair, the pink cheeks, the delicately veined temples. The little fellow knew Mahala. She was his beloved playmate. He reached his hands toward her, crowing and laughing and begging to be taken for one of the romps he was accustomed to indulging in with her. He liked spatting her cheeks with his hands. He liked to tousle her hair. He liked her kisses on his hands and his feet and the back of his neck and all over his little head.

Mahala retreated until she was pressed flat against the wall. Even her hands, as they stretched out at her sides, were hard pressed, palm to the wall, behind her. She could go no farther. She was a tortured thing brought to bay. Jason advanced.

“You’ve got to take him,” he said in a voice torn with suffering. “You’ve got to take him!”

Then Mahala began to cry. She looked at Jason imploringly.

“What does my heart know of the heart of a child beating beneath it?” she said to him. “How are my dry breasts to furnish life for another woman’s baby?”

Jason still pressed the child toward her. Mahala became primitive. The strength of temper that had always characterized her swept through her. She lifted her head shamelessly. She used the lids of her eyes to squeeze the tears from them. Her voice was stern and relentless as she said to Jason: “You big fool! Ellen can’t give away her baby. Haven’t you got the sense to see it? It’s bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. Take it back to her and make her listen to reason! Make her see that a real woman couldn’t possibly give up her baby. You would drive her as insane as your father did Rebecca.”

“You’re right,” said Jason.

He wrapped the blanket around the child, turned its face to his breast, and started toward the door. As he opened it, there was a horrible crash. He was blinded with running streaks of lightning till he staggered back. There was the ripping sound of a bolt that had struck something solid so close that it rocked the house. He turned appealingly to Mahala. She darted past him and pushed shut the door.

“Wait!” she said. “Wait till I get the lantern, I’ll go to Ellen with you. I can make her understand better than you can.”

Jason looked down at the small bundle struggling in his arms. “I ought not take the boy out in this,” he said. “We might be struck.”

Mahala shook her head. “Ellen can’t be left alone. We’ve got to go. Some terrible thing will happen.”

Mahala hurried to the kitchen to find and light the lantern. For one second she stood at the window, her hands cupped around her face, trying to peer through the darkness, to see if the lights were burning in Jason’s house. She would not have been surprised to see great tongues of flame leaping from it, but the rain was beating in sheets against the window, small branches and wet leaves were plastered on it and a black bird, blown from its shelter among the bushes, struck the glass and slid down, white lights streaming from its green eyes, its wings outspread, its breast bleeding.

As the door closed behind Jason, Ellen had turned and fallen across the empty cradle. As she raised herself, her hands struck the warm sheets and the little pillow where the baby’s head had lain. On her knees staring into it, there came the first realization of what she had done. She had sent her baby to be mothered by another woman. Dazed at the tragedy that had befallen her, she caught up the little pillow and held it warm against her face and then her empty arms folded around it.

Suddenly she was on her feet. She threw the pillow back into the cradle and sprang to the door. She opened it wide and screamed into the night: “Jason! Jason! Bring back my baby!”

She bent her head and tried to hear his voice in answer. But the wind howled past her. Flying leaves and branches and a dust storm from the road almost blinded her as she tried to raise her voice, to scream with all her might: “Jason! Jason!”

She realized that she could not make him hear her above the fury of the storm. She realized that she had only a minute. The rain would come in torrents very soon. With her arms extended before her to protect her face and breast, she rushed into the night. She found the gate and started down the road. With every flare of lightning she could see a few yards in advance of her. Until the next flare, she was in darkness. The wind blew her wide skirts so tightly around her that she could scarcely step. She realized that she could not have found her way had it not been for the light in Mahala’s house. That she could see, and she tried to go straight toward it. The difficulty in running told her that she had lost the road, but so long as she could see the light, she knew that she must reach the house. Once she had a fight to extricate herself from a thicket of bushes and then she ran into a big tree, and the tree told her where she was. She was very near the house now. This was a friendly tree in whose shelter she liked to walk whenever she went to Mahala’s house. She had stopped beneath it to pick up shining acorns for the baby to play with. She had seen the squirrels racing up and down it. She had seen great, horned owls spread their wings and sail from their day-time shelter among its heavy, gnarled branches. It was almost like meeting a friend in a time of extremity.

She threw her arms around it and laid her face against it and waited for the next flare of lightning to show her how to find the road again, but following that flash there came a dreadful bolt that struck the oak tree, rending it from top to base.

Through the most terrific storm she ever had experienced, holding the lantern high above her, Mahala stumbled down the foot path beside the fence trying to light the way for Jason who kept as close behind her as he could with the baby’s face buried in his breast. Trying to see her way ahead of her, Mahala stumbled over the body of Ellen lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the oak tree. The flickering glare of the rain-dripping lantern showed her still face and the splintered tree beside her.

Wordless, Mahala set down the lantern and held out her arms for the child. Jason gave the baby to her and lifted Ellen. Mahala picked up the lantern, and they carried Ellen home and laid her on her bed. The baby had fallen asleep and they put him in his cradle and covered him. Then they knelt, one on each side of Ellen, and sobbed out the pain, the grief, and the torture that had torn their hearts to the limit of endurance.