Page:Shubala - a child-mother (IA shubalachildmoth00soraiala).pdf/20

 ignorance of how to treat or help herself, and the incompetence of such help as was available, had destroyed her reason. The torture in her eyes haunted one. Nothing would appeal to the poor distraught creature till some impulse made me take her a life-sized baby doll. For five years she had not spoken. "Oh, it has come at last" was the cry with which she greeted it. And thereafter for "the child" she controlled and helped herself past fits of violence. "For the child" she recaptured the few glimmerings of intelligence which her sad fate had not completely overlaid: it was pathetic to see how she checked the poor insane drivelling habit, or the untidy, indecent ways which had grown with her condition. With the child in her lap, she was safe—safe and even happy.

But if only we had known in time, she need never at all have had that ghastly experience. If only we can help in time now, this minute, hundreds of thousands of women can be saved from the like.