When they opened the door everything was clean and fresh, as if just prepared for them. Christine looked about her with an air of relief that it rejoiced him to see. He told her to get a little rest, if she could, and that he would stroll about for a while and come back for her. She went in and closed the door and he turned away. In a few minutes the stewardess knocked, to offer her services, and Christine, as she accepted them, felt a sudden change as to her whole surrounding atmosphere.

Noel, meanwhile, had gone up on deck, and was walking about and looking around him curiously. He was certainly out of his element, but his habits of life had been such as to make him feel at home almost anywhere. What he rebelled at was the thought of Christine being in this place. Her distress of mind and her poverty seemed so indecently exposed to view. He lingered a while in the thick of the crowd, torturing himself with the horrible incongruity between it and the poor, dear woman in the stateroom below. He had contrived to have put at her disposal the best the boat afforded, but it was abominably meagre. What business had she here at all? It was no place for her. His whole nature rebelled at it, and he grew savage as he thought that it was no business of his to put it right.

Throwing his cigar away he went below and knocked very gently at the stateroom door. It was opened by Christine, who had, perhaps, bathed her face, for the traces of tears were almost gone, though enough remained to give her eyes an appealingness that went to his very heart.

"Well," he said, in that tentative tone which admits of any sort of answer.

She looked immediately at the baby lying on the berth and stood aside to let him see. "He is quiet," she said. "I don't think he is in any pain.

I am going to take him on deck again. The doctor said the only thing for him was change of air. I couldn't take him away, so he said to bring him down here on the water every afternoon would do him good, and I've been bringing him every day."

"And is he better?" Noel said, forcing himself to appear to be thinking chiefly of the child. He saw that the idea absorbed her so completely that she had no thought of herself and apparently none of him, and this was well.

"His fever is not so high," she said. "Oh, he has been so ill. Once I thought--" but she broke off unable to speak, and turning toward the berth caught up the child with the fervor of pa.s.sion, though she did not forget to touch him tenderly, and held him close against her. Then she put on his little head a muslin cap that perhaps had fitted him once but was now pitifully large, and carried her light burden out into the saloon and up the steps, refusing Noel's offer to help her. They went back to their old places, which were quiet and away from the crowd, and when Noel had made her as comfortable as he could, he drew his chair near and sat down. And then the watch began again. He looked at her, and she looked down at the baby on her lap, and apparently the baby was no more unconscious of the gaze bent on him than Christine was of the look with which Noel steadily regarded her. He burned to ask her questions as to what had taken place since he had seen her last, but he feared to waken her from her unconsciousness. It was evident that she accepted him as a simple fact. He had come and here he was. If he helped her to take care of the baby it was all right and she was glad. Not a scruple as to the acceptance of the help had occurred to her. He saw this and was too thankful for it not to be willing to take precautions against interrupting this most satisfactory course of things.

The child would die, he felt sure of that, and his heart quivered to think how she would suffer. And who was there to help her to bear it? He almost wished he was in truth her brother, that his might naturally be that right; almost, but not quite. Well, he wished a great many vain and useless things as he sat there opposite to her, conscious that she had forgotten him. He moved, and even coughed, but she took no notice. The baby's little mouth twitched slightly and her whole being became acutely conscious. She changed its position and words of pa.s.sionate lovingness crowded upon her lips. But instead of responding to them, it began to whimper fretfully--a sound that brought a spasm of positive anguish across her face.

"There, then, mother's little dear lamb that mother has hurt and troubled! Mother loves her little man, and he'll get well and make poor mother happy again--won't he?"

It was some time before the child could be quieted. The peevish little whine almost angered Noel when he saw how it was cutting into Christine's heart. In the hope of diverting the baby he put out his hand and began to snap his fingers softly in front of its face. There was a ring on the hand that sparkled, and the baby saw it and stretched out his little hand toward it. A gleam of pure delight came into the mother's face.

"He hasn't noticed anything for days," she said, catching Noel's hand in an ardent grasp and holding it so that the baby could see the ring.

He felt her fingers close upon it almost lovingly. He knew she could have kissed it, because it had for that second been of interest to her child--and with no knowledge that it was in any way different from the ring upon it. When the baby turned away from it fretfully she let it drop.

At last the little invalid went to sleep in Christine's lap. The boat, which was not to land but went only for the excursion on the water, had turned and they were going back toward the city. The breeze that played around Christine's bent head blew little curly strands about her face and called a faint flush into her cheeks. Noel noted everything.

Night began to draw on and she could no longer see the baby's face distinctly. She drew the end of a light shawl over him, saying as she did so:

"The doctor says this is the best of all--the coming back in the fresh evening air."

She sat up in her place then, and Noel could see that she kept her hand upon her baby's pulse.

"Do you ever sing now?" he asked abruptly.

She shook her head.

"No--except little songs to baby."

"I heard while I was in Europe of your making an immense hit in the amateur opera. Why did you stop?"

"I was forced to. Those people compelled me. I don't know why, but they looked on me as something apart from them. The women were strange and unfriendly, and the men--I don't know," she broke off confusedly, "but it is all hateful to me to think of. I was glad to get away from them.

The night of the opera was the last time. Oh, if my baby will get well,"

she said, bending to touch his thin hair with her lips, "I will never need anything but him. You believe in prayer--don't you? Will you pray to G.o.d to make him well?"

Noel promised with a willingness that seemed to comfort her. Absorbed in the child once more, she soon seemed to forget him and silence fell between them again. It was scarcely broken during the whole return trip.

She seemed to have nothing to say to him. When she spoke to him at all her thrilling voice dropped to a whisper, and it was always to give some information about the baby. Once she said with fervent interest, "He is asleep," and once she told him that his skin felt cool and natural. This was all. It must be owned that Noel didn't think very lovingly of that poor atom of humanity as he sat there. It was the baby that had caused her to be in this false position, which he felt so keenly, and it was terror for the baby which brought that suffering look to her face. And yet something of the same feeling was in his own breast as he palpitated at the thought of this little creature's dying and breaking the heart of its mother, who plainly loved it with the absorbingness of the first pa.s.sion she had ever known.

When they reached the wharf it was quite dark, and the electric lights and publicity of the place made Noel shrink so from the thought of exposing the girl, in her suffering, to the gaze of such men and women as he saw about him, that, without consulting her, he called a carriage and helped her into it, following and seating himself opposite her. She protested at first, but he said:

"I have a long way to go and need a carriage, and I may as well drop you at home. Where must I put you down?"

She gave a street and number. The door was shut, the man mounted to his box and drove away, and they were alone together. Alone, except for the baby, but that was enough to make him feel that he and all the world beside were thousands of miles away from her. They drove on in silence.

Now and then as they pa.s.sed a bright light, her beautiful face, outlined by its dark hat-brim and darker hair, shone out from the shadow, but for which he might have felt himself in a dream interrupted by no sound, except the monotonous rumble of the wheels. Always as he looked her eyes were lowered to catch each pa.s.sing glimpse of the baby's face. She never looked at him.

He began to feel it necessary to ask one or two questions that he might know what to prepare for, but as he broke the silence to begin she said warningly, in a low whisper:

"Sh-sh-sh, he is waking," and then fell to rocking and crooning over the baby and coaxing him back to sleep. When he seemed quite quiet again she said suddenly in a low whisper, and in the dark he felt her eyes upon him:

"What makes you so kind? No one is ever kind to me. I thought n.o.body cared. I had one friend but she went away. She did not want to leave me, but she had to go far off somewhere to make a living for her mother."

"I will always help you if you will let me," Noel said, whispering too, for fear of being silenced. "I will send my sisters to see you, if you will let them come--"

"Oh, no!" she said, interrupting him impulsively. "Don't send any women out of the world you live in to see me. They are cruel--they have dreadful thoughts of me. They look at me strangely and suspect me. Oh, no--I'd rather take my baby to the end of the earth and hide from them.

I beg you not to send any one to see me."

Noel hastened to promise her that he certainly would not go against her wish, and was wondering how he should find out the things he longed so to know, when suddenly the carriage stopped.

The driver got down and rang the bell. As Noel was helping Christine to get out, the door was opened and the figure of Dallas appeared. It was a surprise to him, somehow, and an unwelcome one. How his spirit rose in abhorrence of this man!

Christine went up the steps with the baby, and as he had her bag and shawl Noel followed, telling the driver to wait.

It was a miserable little house, poor and cheap, and empty, and but for the counteracting effect of his anger against Dallas, Noel thought he must have almost sobbed to see Christine here. Dallas himself was not at all discomposed as he recognized his visitor and asked him in, offering a hand which Noel managed to touch.

The baby was still asleep, and when Christine had placed it carefully on a wretched little couch, she seemed, for the first time, free to think of Noel. She turned and asked him to sit down--at the same time glancing about her with a sudden rush of consciousness, which until now a nearer interest had crowded out. The poverty-stricken look of her surroundings was made the more evident by the few objects belonging to other days that lay about--a charming sacque, smartly braided and lined with rich silk, hung on the back of a chair, and a handsome travelling rug was folded under the baby on the sofa. Everything was clean, for Christine even yet had not come to contemplate the possibility of doing without a servant.

There was a small kerosene lamp on a table, over which were spread a lot of cards with their faces up. Some one had evidently been playing solitaire, and as evidently, on the witness of another sense, been accompanying the game by the smoking of bad tobacco. The room reeked with it to a degree that made Noel feel it an outrage to Christine. But what was he to do? There was but one thing. He said good-by and went away, carrying the memory of Christine's face flushed scarlet for shame.

He remembered afterward that Dallas had taken no notice of the baby--not even glancing at it or inquiring for it--a thing which the poor mother had taken as a matter of course. He thought, as he shook hands with her at parting, that Christine had tried to speak--perhaps a word of thanks--but something stopped it and she let him go in silence.

The next afternoon Noel, at the same hour, went down to the wharf and boarded the excursion boat, for the deliberate purpose of having some practical talk with Christine. He soon found her, absorbed so completely in the baby that his coming seemed scarcely to disturb for a moment the intentness of her preoccupation. This, at first, made him feel a certain irritation, but he soon had reason to congratulate himself upon an absence of self-consciousness on her part which made it the easier for him to put certain questions. Everything he inquired about she responded to with absolute honesty and a sort of vagueness which precluded any such feelings as wounded pride. He learned, by his adroit questionings, that they were now very poor, that Dallas had been spending his princ.i.p.al, which was now exhausted, and that their chief means of support was the money she obtained for doing a very elaborate sort of embroidery which she had learned while at the convent. When he asked if she had all the work she wanted she said no, and that she often rang door-bells and asked ladies to give her work and was refused. She told all this with apathy, however, and seemed to have no power of acute feeling outside of her child.

Then Noel, with a beating heart, made a proposal to her which had occurred to him during the wakeful hours of the night, but which he had felt he should hardly have courage for. This was that she should come every day and give him sittings for a new picture he had in mind.

When he suggested it, to his delight she caught eagerly at the idea, accepting every word he said in absolute good faith, and showing no disposition to doubt when he told her that every hour would be many times more valuable so spent than in sewing, as good models were rare and very well paid. She thanked him with the simplest grat.i.tude, and when she heard that she would be allowed to bring her child with her she promised to come the next morning to his studio. The baby, she said, was better now, and would sleep for hours at a time, and in the afternoon she could take him on the water as usual. It was evident that there was no one else who made any demand upon her time--a significant fact to Noel.

Accordingly, next morning she came, her baby in her arms as usual. She had made an effort to dress herself attractively, looking upon the matter in a very businesslike way, and so girlish and charming and delicately high-bred did she look in her French-made gown of transparent black, with tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of pale green ribbons, and a wide lace hat to match, that Noel rebelled with all his might against her lugging that absurdly superfluous baby up those long steps. Still it was necessary to accept the inevitable, and he set his teeth and said nothing. When she had laid the sleeping child upon a lounge and turned toward him, her eyes fastened eagerly upon a great bunch of crimson roses in a blue china bowl, which Noel had gotten in honor of her coming. She did not, of course, suspect this, but he saw that here, at least, was a vivid and spontaneous feeling apart from her child, as she bent above the ma.s.s of rich color.

"Oh, how good they are!" she said. "I seem to want to eat them, and smell them and look at them all at once."

She held them off and regarded them enjoyingly a moment and then raised them to her face again, and smelled them with audible little sniffs, even nibbling the red leaves with her white teeth, as she looked at Noel over them and smiled. He went, delighted, and brought a basket of luscious grapes which he held out to her. She took a large bunch, and holding it by the stem began to pick the grapes off one by one and eat them enjoyingly. They were pale green in color, and he noted the effect of her clear pink nails against them and the beautiful curves of the long fingers that held the stem. He poured out some water in a beautiful old Venetian goblet and offered it to her. There was a bit of ice in it, which she tinkled against the side with the delight of a child before she drank it.

"I am sure I am dreaming, perfectly sure," she said seriously. "I only hope I won't wake until I have finished this bunch of grapes."

Then she lifted the gla.s.s to her mouth, tilting it until she had got the ice, which she chewed up noisily with her sharp little teeth. Noel felt a keen delight to see that she was letting herself be gay for a brief moment, but he seemed to see into the sadness back of it more plainly than ever.

"Oh, I am very happy," she said, suddenly throwing herself into a chair where she could see her sleeping child. "My baby is better--a great deal better; he has smiled twice, and is sleeping so peacefully! Yes, I am happy!--and yet the other feeling--the one that has been with me always lately--is here too. It is very strange that one can be at the same time very happy and also the most miserable woman in the world!

Does this sound like craziness? I am not crazy. There are some people--did you know it?--who can't go crazy!--who never would, no matter what happened to them! A doctor told me that, and I believe it.

He says it is const.i.tutional or inherited or something like that--a physical thing--having a very strong brain that couldn't be upset!"

She rose now, and insisted that the sitting should begin. Noel saw again the unforgotten outline of her beautiful head, with its rippling dark hair drawn backward into that low knot behind.