showing through the blue dusk frightened her, so ghostlike did they appear.
The cradle stood under the window, the child's face just visible on the
pallor of the pillow. 'Baby is asleep,' she said; 'that's a good sign,' and
watched the cradle, trying to remember how long it was since baby had had
her bottle; and while wondering if she could trust herself to wake when
baby cried she began to notice that the room was becoming lighter. 'It
cannot be the dawn,' she thought; 'the dawn is hours away; we're in
December. Besides, the dawn is grey, and the light is green, a sort of
pantomime light,' she said. It seemed to her very like a fairy tale. The
giant snoring, and her baby stirring in her cradle with the limelight upon
her, or was she dreaming? It might be a dream out of which she could not
rouse herself. But the noise she heard was Dick's breathing, and she wished
that Ralph would breathe more easily. Ralph, Ralph! No, she was with Dick.
Dick, not Ralph, was her husband. It was with a great effort that she
roused herself. 'It was only a dream' she murmured. 'But baby is crying.
Her cry is so faint,' she said; and, slinging her legs over the side of the
bed, she tried to find her dressing-gown, but could not remember where she
had laid it 'Baby wants her bottle,' she said, and sought for the matches
vainly at first, but at last she found them, and lighted a spirit lamp.
'One must get the water warmed, cold milk would kill her;' and while the
water was heating she walked up and down the room rocking her baby, talking
to her, striving to quiet her; and when she thought the water was warm she
tried to prepare baby's milk as the doctor had ordered it. Her hope was
that she had succeeded in mixing the milk and water in right proportions,
for the last time she had given the baby her bottle she was afraid the
water was not warm enough. Perhaps that was why baby was crying, or it
might be merely a little wind that was troubling her. She held the baby
upright, hoping that the pain would pass away with a change of position,
and she walked up and down the room rocking the child in her arms and
crooning to her for fully half an hour. At last the child ceased to wail,
and she laid her in her cradle and sat watching, thinking that if she were
to lose her baby she must go mad.... She had lost Dick's love, and if the
baby were taken away there would be nothing left for her to live for.
'Nothing left for me to live for,' she repeated again and again, till the
cold winter's night striking through her nightgown reminded her that she
was risking her life, which she had no right to do, for baby needed her.
'Who would look after poor baby if I were taken away?' she asked, and
shaking with cold, was about to crawl into bed; but on laying her knee on
the bedside she remembered that a little spirit often saved a human life;
and going to the chest of drawers took out the bottle she had hidden from
Dick and filled a glass.
The spirit diffused a grateful warmth through her, and she drank a second
glass slowly, thinking of her child and husband, and how good she intended
to be to both of them, until ideas became broken, and she tumbled into bed,
awaking Dick, who was soon asleep again, with Kate by his side watching a
rim of light rising above a dark chimney stack and wondering what new shows
must be preparing. Already the rim of light had become a crescent, and
before her eyes closed in sleep the full moon looked down through the
window into the cradle, waking the sleeping child. But her cries were too
weak; her mother lay in sleep beyond reach of her wails, heart-breaking
though they were. The little blankets were cast aside, and the struggle
between life and death began: soft roundnesses fell into distortions;
chubby knees were wrenched to and fro, muscles seemed to be torn, and a few
minutes later little Kate, who had known of this world but a ray of
moonlight, died--a glimpse of the moon was all that had been granted to
her. After watching for an hour or more, the moon moved up the skies; and
in Kate's dream the moon was the great yellow witch in the pantomime, who,
before striding her broomstick, cries back: 'Thou art mine only, for ever