WHITEWASH
lighted up the tumbled bed, and drew sharp lines about the face of the dying child. Against the whiteness of sheets and pillows, the intensely black, shrunken figure of the bereaved woman seemed doubly sombre.
The doctor, with his squat figure, oddly assorted garments, and heavy, weary face, seemed a creature of Balzac's pen turned flesh and blood. Victoria gazed on the scene, her nerves tingling.
"I think," she whispered to him, "we, my friend and I, would better go. You can't let this blow strike her suddenly. I'm sure she'd go mad. If you should need us, send word; we'll come at once. But she would better be alone when she knows."
The physician nodded, and Victoria, beckoning to Sonia, slipped from the room into the hall. The whole house seemed dimly astir, but they saw no one as they made their way to their room. They did not undress, but lay down on their cots without speaking, and gazed on the sickly dawn that made a pale square of the window. An hour—two hours; the stir of waking things grew in the outer air; crowing of cocks, singing of
