Julia did not answer; she did not open her eyes even when Jim took her moist hot hand in one of his, and brushed back the lovely tumbled hair from her wet forehead.  She was breathing deep and violently, as if she had been running.  Presently she beat upon the bed with one clenched fist, and began to toss her head from side to side.  Then the stifled moan began to escape from her bitten lips again, her face worked pitifully, and she began to cry.

“Now, crowd it on, Jim!” Doctor Lippincott said, nodding toward the chloroform.

“Breathe deep, breathe it in, my darling!” Jim urged, pouring the sweet, choking stuff upon the little mask he held above the tortured face.

“You aren’t—­helping me—­at all!” Julia muttered, in a deep hoarse voice.  But her shrill thin cry sank to a moan again; she stammered incoherent words.

So struggling and sobbing, now quieter under the anaesthetic, now crying aloud, the next long hour somehow passed for the helpless, suffering little animal that was Julia.  A climax came, and the kindly chloroform smothered the last terrible cry.

Julia awoke to a realization that something was snapping brightly, like wood on a fire; that the cottony fumes in her head were breaking, drifting away; that commonplace cheerful voices were saying things very near her.  She seemed to have fallen from infinite space to this wretchedly uncomfortable bed and this wretchedly uncomfortable position.  She wanted a pillow; her head was rocking with pain, and her forehead was sticky with moisture.  Yet under and over all other sensations was the heavenly relief from the familiar agonies of the day.  She felt so tired that the mere thought of beginning to rest distressed her; she would not open her eyes; her lids seemed sealed.  She felt faintly worried because she could not seem to intelligently grasp the subject of Honolulu.

“Honolulu?  Honolulu?” This was the doctor’s pleasant drawl.  “No.  I haven’t.  Mrs. Lippincott’s people live in New York, so our junketings are usually in that direction.”

“Ah, well, you’d like Honolulu,” Miss Wheaton’s voice answered.  A pause.  Then she said, “I put some wood on.  It’s not so warm to-day as it was yesterday.”

Julia strove in vain to pierce the meaning of these cryptic words.  Presently the doctor said, “Perfectly normal?” more as a statement than a question, and Miss Wheaton answered in a matter-of-fact voice, “Oh, absolutely.”

Julia opened her eyes, looked up into the nurse’s face, and with returning consciousness came self-pity.

“I couldn’t do it, Miss Wheaton,” she whispered pitifully, with trembling lips.

“Hello, little girlie, you’re beginning to feel better, aren’t you?” Miss Wheaton said.  “Here she is, Doctor, as fine as silk.”

Julia’s languid eyes found the doctor’s kindly face.

“But the baby?” she faltered, with a rush of tears.

“The baby is a very noisy young woman,” said Doctor Lippincott cheerfully.  “I wrapped her in her pink thingamagig, and she’s right here in Jim’s room, getting her first bath from her granny.”