Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/184

, while she was torn and inhuman with agony, he sent for Dr. Hesselink, and that horrible afternoon when the prairie spring was exuberant outside the windows of the poor iodoform-reeking room, they took the baby from her, dead.

Had it been possible, he might have understood Hesselink's success then, have noted that gravity and charm, that pity and sureness, which made people entrust their lives to him. Not cold and blaming was Hesselink now, but an older and wiser brother, very compassionate. Martin saw nothing. He was not a physician. He was a terrified boy, less useful to Hesselink than the dullest nurse.

When he was certain that Leora would recover, Martin sat by her bed, coaxing, "We'll just have to make up our minds we never can have a baby now, and so I want— Oh, I'm no good! And I've got a rotten temper. But to you, I want to be everything!"

She whispered, scarce to be heard:

"He would have been such a sweet baby. Oh, I know! I saw him so often. Because I knew he was going to be like you, when you were a baby." She tried to laugh. "Perhaps I wanted him because I could boss him. I've never had anybody that would let me boss him. So if I can't have a real baby, I'll have to bring you up. Make you a great man that everybody will wonder at, like your Sondelius Darling, I worried so about your worrying—"

He kissed her, and for hours they sat together, unspeaking, eternally understanding, in the prairie twilight.