Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/221

Rh joy, comfort, recompense, she had lost. She passionately wanted the physical presence of the baby, wanted to forget everything in such a half-animal, half-spiritual peace as its small, clinging life would have brought to her. She revolted against the uselessness of her suffering. She desired to die, and for weeks thought she might.

For a time she was indifferent to Basil, and even to Ronald, now nearly two years old. But she was cared for in spite of herself, strength began to come back to her, and soon she could go to the apartment they had taken for the rest of the winter. In the spring they meant to go abroad, Teresa and the baby first, Basil following as soon as he could get through some necessary work. He had still another book to illustrate—a book made up of magazine articles on the foreign quarters of New York. Basil despised the sentimentality of the letter-press, and promised himself some recompense in making his drawings as biting and brutal as possible. Teresa's illness had been expensive, and Basil had recently had to pay a note for a thousand dollars, endorsed by Major Ransome for a friend. Need of money drove him finally to agree to a demand which he had fought off for some time. Isabel Perry wanted another portrait of herself. She wanted it, Basil knew, simply in order to secure his presence at definite times. At first he