Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/195

 "He scared me. He looked at me funny. He thinks something's wrong with me."

"How do you mean?"

"With my insides, I guess. He thinks I'm gonna kick off, having this baby."

"You're crazy."

"You didn't see the way he looked at me. Maybe he's right," she said, gloomily.

"Ain't you got faith no more in Stewart?"

"Yes, but he ain't seen me lately. Maybe something has happened."

"Oh, go on," said Eddie. "Nothing just happens. You'd 'a' felt it, I'll bet, if anything bad had happened."

There was no car in sight; so they walked slowly down Madison Avenue. Dot was preoccupied and dreary. She gazed without interest into the windows of the shops that lined the street. Crazy shops. Many of them had nothing but books in the windows. Others were full of junk, funny-looking vases and plates and things. One shop had nothing at all on display except a great big cabinet with Chinese designs. "Give me Two Hundred and Seventh Street any time," thought Dot. "Or Willis Avenue."

She undressed and lay down when she got home. It had been a horrible trip. She was dead tired and depressed. Her body was a smoldering expanse of quivering flesh. That doctor! Did he know something that kindly, good-natured Dr. Stewart didn't know? Had she seen her future truthfully foretold in the panicked gaze that he had cast upon her?

Some women did die in childbirth. Everybody knew that. The rate was low nowadays. But still, some women did die. Would she be one of them?

Funny she hadn't thought about dying before. And funny that somehow she didn't care for herself. But to