The southwest angle of the building was exposed fully to the force of the afternoon sun, and the narrow cell was so hot that Beryl opened the door leading into the corridor, in order to create a draught through the opposite window.

The tired child was fretfully drowsy, but with the innate perversity of toddling babyhood, resented and resisted every effort to soothe her to sleep.  Refusing to lie across the nurse’s lap, the small tyrant clambered up, wrapped her arms about her neck, and finally Beryl rose and walked up and down, humming softly Chopin’s dreamy “Berceuse”; while the baby added a crooning accompaniment that grew fainter and intermittent until the blue eyes closed, one arm fell, and the thumb was plunged between the soft full lips.

Warily the nurse laid her down in a cradle, which consisted of an oval basket mounted on roughly fashioned wooden rockers, and drawing it close to the table, Beryl straightened the white cross-barred muslin slip that was too short to cover the rosy dimpled feet; and smoothed the flossy tendrils of yellow hair crumpled around the lovely face.

The Sister of Charity, who, in the darkest hours of the pestilence had shrouded the poor young mother, did not forget the human waif astray in the world; but having secured a home for it in an “asylum,” to which she promised it should be removed so soon as all danger of carrying contagion was over, had appointed the ensuing Monday on which to bear it away from the gloomy precincts, where sinless life had dawned in disgrace and degradation.  This pretty toy, dowered with an immortal soul, stained by an inherited criminal strain, had appealed to the feminine tenderness in Beryl’s nature, and she stood a moment, lost in admiration of the rounded curves and dainty coloring.

“Poor little blossom.  Nobody’s baby!  A lily bud adrift on a dead sea of sin.  Dovie—­Eve Werneth’s child—­but you will always be to me Dulce, my pretty clinging Dulce, my velvet-eyed cherub model.”

Turning away, she bathed her face and hands, and leaned for a while against the southern window; listening to the exultant song of a red bird hovering near his brooding brown mate, to the soothing murmur of the distant falls, borne in on the wings of the thievish June breeze that had rifled some far-off garden of the aroma of honeysuckle.  The current of air had swung the door back, leaving only a hand’s breadth of open space, and while she sang to the baby, her own voice had drowned the sound of footsteps in the corridor.

On the whitewashed wall of the cell, a sheet of drawing paper had been tacked, and taking her crayons, Beryl returned to the cradle, changed the position of the child’s left hand, and approaching the almost completed sketch on the wall, retouched the outline of the sleeping figure.  Now and then she paused in her work, to look down at the golden lashes sweeping the slumber-flushed cheeks, and pondering the mystery of the waif’s future, she chanted in a rich contralto voice, the solemn “Reproaches” of Gounod’s “Redemption.”