The trained nurse had arrived.  The doctor kept coming.  Martha was plainly “in a state.”  And Emily Giles, for all her grim ways, had moments almost tender.  All centering, swiftly centering, as the long voyage neared its end.

CHAPTER XII

What deep relief and blessed peace.  She lay on her bed, now smiling, now inert, eyes closed, weak and relaxed, but already aware from time to time of the beginnings within herself of new vitality, food for her child.  Her body felt profoundly changed, and so it was with her spirit.  Again the thought rose in her mind that this had settled and sealed her life.  But she was glad of the certainty.  Slowly, as her strength returned, all the vague desires and dreams of the last few months came back, grew clear; and she planned and planned for the small boy whom the nurse kept bringing to her bed.  At such moments the new love within her rose like sonic fresh bursting spring.

The city, though so vast, complex, came to be like a place full of miracles.  The voices of its ceaseless life came into her window day and night, the hoots and distant bellows of ships, the rattle of wheels, the rush of cars, the long swift thunder of the “L,” and bursts of laughter from the streets, and animated voices.  She remembered her first night in New York; she recalled her earlier visions of the city as a place of thrilling aspirations, wide, sparkling, abundant lives.  And Ethel smiled and told herself: 

“All the glory I dreamed of is here.”

The thought came to her clearly that Amy it was who had hidden it all, who had stood smilingly in the way and had said, “All this is nothing.”  But she felt a rush of pity now for the woman who was left behind, cut off so completely by the birth of this small son.  The nurse was bringing him into the room, and Ethel smiled at her and said: 

“Ask Susette if she doesn’t want to come, too.”

It was only a day or two later that her husband broke his news.  He had been so dear to her, his visits had been such a joy, and although behind his tenderness vaguely she had sensed some change, some new excitement in his mind, in her own absorption in their boy she had attributed it to that.  But early one evening he came in with a sheaf of roses in his arms, and when she had exclaimed at them and breathed deep of their dewy fragrance, Joe bent over and kissed her, and said a little huskily: 

“I’ve got some big news for you, little wife.  It’s big.  It’s going to mean so much.”

“What is it, Joe?”

She stared up intently into his eyes.  He was telling her he had made money.  He was telling how the approaching birth of their small son had made him feel he must put an end to these ups and downs, and how he had worked and racked his brains.  He told of heavy borrowing, of anxious weeks, of a wonderful stroke of luck at last which not only made him rich for the moment but opened the way to wealth