She released me so abruptly and went out of the room so quickly that I had no opportunity to answer her. But I lay back on my pillows, warm with happiness, filled with gratitude that in spite of the many controversies in which my husband's mother and I had been involved, and the verbal indignities which she had sometimes heaped upon me, we had managed to salvage so much real affection as a basis for our future relations with each other.
The reference to my own little mother, which I had made, brought back to me the homesickness, the longing for her which comes over me often, especially when I am not feeling well. When Lillian returned she found me weeping quietly.
"Here, this will never do!" she said kindly, but firmly. "I'm not going to ask you what you were crying about, for I haven't time to listen. I must fix you up to see two visitors. But"--she forestalled the question I was about to ask--"before you see one of them I must tell you that Harry and I have about come to the parting of the ways."
"The parting of the ways!" I gasped. "Harry and you?"
Lillian Underwood nodded as calmly as if she had simply announced a decision to alter a gown or a hat, instead of referring to a separation from her husband.
"It will have to come to that, I am afraid," she said, and looking more closely at her I saw that her calmness was only assumed, that humiliation and sadness had her in their grip.
"I have always feared that when the time came for me to be 'my honest self' instead of a 'made-up daisy'"--she smiled wearily as she quoted the childish rhyme--"Harry would not be big enough to take it well. Of course I could and would stand all his unpleasantness concerning my altered appearance, but the root of his actions goes deeper than that, I am afraid. He dislikes children, and I fear that he will object to my having my little girl with me. And if he does--"
Her tone spelled finality but I had no time to bestow upon the probable fate of Harry Underwood. With a glad little cry, I drew Lillian down to my bedside and kissed her.
"Oh! Lillian!" I exclaimed, "are you really going to have your baby girl after all?"
She nodded, and I held her close with a little prayer of thanksgiving that fate had finally relented and had given to this woman the desire of her heart, so long kept from her.