It was only a few days later when coming home one evening he found that Deborah’s doctor had put her to bed and installed a nurse.  There followed a week of keen suspense when Roger stayed home from the office.  She liked to have him with her, and sitting at her bedside he saw how changed his daughter was, how far in these few hours she had drawn into herself.  He had suspected for some time that all was not well with Deborah, and Allan confirmed his suspicions.  There was to be grave danger both for the mother and the child.  It would come out all right, of course, he strove to reassure himself.  Nothing else could happen now, with her life so splendidly settled at last.  That Fate could be so pitiless—­no, it was unthinkable!

“This is what comes of your modern woman!” Roger exclaimed to Allan one night.  “This is the price she’s paying for those nerve-racking years of work!”

The crisis came toward the end of the week.  And while for one entire night and through the day that followed and far into the next night the doctors and nurses fought for life in the room upstairs, Roger waited, left to himself, sitting in his study or restlessly moving through the house.  And still that thought was with him—­the price!  It was kept in his mind by the anxious demands which her big family made for news.  The telephone kept ringing.  Women in motors from uptown and humbler visitors young and old kept coming to make inquiries.  More gifts were brought and flowers.  And Roger saw these people, and as he answered their questions he fairly scowled in their faces—­unconsciously, for his mind was not clear.  Reporters came.  Barely an hour passed without bringing a man or a woman from some one of the papers.  He gave them only brief replies.  Why couldn’t they leave his house alone?  He saw her name in headlines:  “Deborah Gale at Point of Death.”  And he turned angrily away.  Vividly, on the second night, there came to him a picture of Deborah’s birth so long ago in this same house.  How safe it had been, how different, how secluded and shut in.  No world had clamored then for news.  And so vivid did this picture grow, that when at last there came to his ears the shrill clear cry of a new life, it was some time before he could be sure whether this were not still his dream of that other night so long ago.

But now a nurse had led him upstairs, and he stood by a cradle looking down at a small wrinkled face almost wholly concealed by a soft woolly blanket.  And presently Allan behind him said,

“It’s a boy, and he’s to be named after you.”  Roger looked up.

“How’s the mother?” he asked.

“Almost out of danger,” was the reply.  Then Roger glanced at Allan’s face and saw how drawn and gray it was.  He drew a long breath and turned back to the child.  Allan had gone and so had the nurse, and he was alone by the cradle.  Relief and peace and happiness stole into his spirit.  He felt the deep remoteness of this strange new little creature from all the clamoring world without—­which he himself was soon to leave.  The thought grew clearer, clearer, as with a curious steady smile Roger stood there looking down.