Osborn was gone.  She heard him entering the bathroom noisily.

“Temper,” she said aloud.  “Temper!”

There was a big blank wall, ugly, insurmountable, cutting right across the garden of married life.

CHAPTER VIII

BABY

Marie awoke Osborn very early on a September morning; she leaned upon her elbow, gazing over to his bed, with terror in her eyes.

“Osborn,” she gasped, “fetch the doctor!  Telephone the nurse!  The time’s come, and I’m so frightened.  You won’t leave me long?  I can’t be left.  Come back quickly and help me, Osborn....  I daren’t stay alone.”

As Osborn ran, roughly dressed, and sick with fear, down the road to the doctor’s house, the irritations, the trials and domestic troubles of the past half-year were swept away by comparison with this that loomed infinitely greater.  It had seemed to him, though he had borne it more or less silently, very pitiable that a man, the breadwinner, should ever come home weary of evenings to find his dinner not ready; it had seemed to him sometimes, well as he had concealed the feeling for the most part, almost intolerably irksome to bear the strain of the fads and fancies, the nerves and frets of a delicate, child-bearing woman; he had wondered more than once if jolly cynics like Rokeby weren’t right after all; the numerous small inroads upon his pocket had been unexpected, pin-pricking sort of shocks.  But all this now receded; the hour was upon them, upon him, and the woman he loved; what did a spoiled dinner matter?  What did a fretful quarrel matter, if only she won through?  He begged the doctor’s immediate presence as a man begging life; but he himself hurried ahead, back to Marie.  When with trembling lips and trembling hands he had kissed and caressed her, he lighted the fires in the flat, in the dining-room, her bedroom, the bathroom geyser and the kitchen stove; he didn’t know what else to do, and he had vague ideas about plenty of hot water for some purpose unknown.  He brought Marie tea and she would not let him leave her again; she clung to him as to a saviour, but he felt so helpless.

The doctor arrived before the nurse; the nurse while he was still there.  “It won’t happen yet,” he told them.  “You must be a brave girl; nurse’ll tell you what to do; and I’ll look in again at mid-day.”

“You’ll stay, doctor?” she cried.

“You won’t leave her, doctor,” stammered Osborn aghast.

“You’ll be all right,” said the doctor to Marie; “you’ve got nurse and I’ll be here again long before you want me.”  Outside in the corridor he faced Osborn’s protests.

“My dear fellow, I can’t stay.  It wouldn’t do any good if I could.  Remember she isn’t the only woman in the world to go through it.”

“She’s the only woman in the world to me!” cried Osborn in a burst of agony.

The doctor advised Osborn to eat breakfast before he left him, and when he had gone the two terrified young people hung upon the wisdom of the nurse.