“Proceed,” said Mrs. Taine, shortly.  “Say what you have to say, and be done with it.”

Myra Willard obeyed.  “Mrs. Taine, twenty-six years ago, your guardian, the father of James Rutlidge won the love of a young girl.  It does not matter who she was.  She was beautiful and innocent That was her misfortune.  Beauty and innocence often bring pain and sorrow, madam, in a world where there are too many men like Mr. Rutlidge, and his son.  The girl thought the man—­she did not know him by his real name—­her lover.  She thought that he became her husband.  A baby was born to the girl who believed herself a wife; and the young mother was happy.  For a short time, she was very happy.

“Then, the awakening came.  The girl mother was holding her baby to her breast, and singing, as happy mothers do, when a strange woman appeared in the open door of the room.  She was a beautiful woman, richly dressed; but her face was distorted with passion.  The young mother did not understand.  She did not know, then, that the woman was Mrs. Rutlidge—­the true wife of the father of her child.  She knew that, afterward.  The woman, in the doorway lifted her hand as though to throw something, and the mother, instinctively, bowed her head to shield her baby.  Then something that burned like fire struck her face and neck.  She screamed in agony, and fainted.

“The rest of the story does not matter, I think.  The injured mother was taken to the hospital.  When she recovered, she learned that Mrs. Rutlidge was dead—­a suicide.  Later, Mr. Rutlidge took the baby to raise as his ward; telling the world that the child was the daughter of a relative who had died at its birth.  You must understand that when the disfigured mother of the baby came to know the truth, she believed that it would be better for the little one if the facts of its birth were never known.  The wealthy Mr. Rutlidge could give his ward every advantage of culture and social position.  The child would grow to womanhood with no stain upon her name.  Because she felt she owed her baby this, the only thing that she could give her, the mother consented and disappeared.

“Madam,” finished Myra Willard, slowly, “a little of the acid that burned that mother’s face fell upon the shoulder of her illegitimate baby.”

“God!” exclaimed the artist.

Throughout Myra Willard’s story, Mrs. Taine stood like a woman of stone.  At the end, she gazed at the woman’s disfigured face, as though fascinated with horror, while her hands moved to finger the buttons of her dress.  Unconscious of what she was doing, as though under some strange spell, without removing her gaze from Myra Willard’s marred features she opened the waist of her dress and bared to them her right shoulder.  It was marked by a broad scar like the scars that disfigured the face of her mother.

Myra Willard started forward, impelled by the mother instinct.  “My baby, my poor, poor girl!”