There was a warm fire in my room for the first time for several months; the single gas jet on the window side of the mantelpiece had been turned low, and the nurse, in list slippers, was taking my little flannel and linen garments out of the chest of drawers and laying them on the flat steel fender.

I think I must have had intervals of insensibility, for the moments of consciousness came and went with me, like the diving and rising of a sea-bird in the midst of swelling waves.

At one such moment I became aware that the doctor and my Welsh landlady, as well as my nurse, were in the room, and that they were waiting for the crisis and fearing for my life.

I heard them talking in low voices which made a drumming noise in my ears, like that which the sea makes when it is rolling into a cave.

“She’s let herself down so low, pore thing, that I don’t know in the world what’s to happen to her.”

“As God is my witness, look you, I never saw anybody live on so little.”

“I’m not afraid of the mother.  I’m more afraid of the child, if you ask me.”

Then the drumming noise would die out, and I would only hear something within myself saying: 

“Oh God, oh God, that my child may be born dead.”

At another moment I heard, above the rattle of the rain, the creaking of the mangle in the cellar-kitchen on the other side of the street.

At still another moment I heard the sound of quarrelling in the house opposite.  A woman was screaming, children were shrieking, and a man was swearing in a thick hoarse voice.

I knew what had happened—­it was midnight, the “public-houses had turned out,” and Mr. Wagstaffe had came home drunk.

The night passed heavily.  I heard myself (as I had done before) calling on Martin in a voice of wild entreaty: 

“Martin!  Martin!”

Then remembering that he was gone I began again to pray.  I heard myself praying to the Blessed Virgin: 

“Oh, Mother of my God, let my child . . .”

But a voice which seemed to come from far away interrupted me.

“Hush, bach, hush!  It will make it harder for thee.”

At length peace came.  It seemed to me that I was running out of a tempestuous sea, with its unlimited loneliness and cruel depth, into a quiet harbour.

There was a heavenly calm, in which I could hear the doctor and the nurse and my Welsh landlady talking together in cheerful whispers.

I knew that everything was over, and with the memory of the storm I had passed through still in my heart and brain.  I said: 

“Is it dead?”

“Dead?” cried the nurse in a voice several octaves higher than usual.  “Dear heart no, but alive and well.  A beautiful little girl!”

“Yes, your baby is all right, ma’am,” said the doctor, and then my Welsh landlady cried: 

“Why did’st think it would be dead, bach?  As I am a Christian woman thee’st got the beautifullest baby that ever breathed.”