Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/298

288 to me to think my own child should have to bear the burden of my mistake like this."

Immediately Helen crossed the room to Stephen. He was standing by the fireplace staring down upon the unlighted logs.

"Why, Stephen," she said gently, reassuringly, "she'll be better in the morning. It's hard to see her suffer, I know, but it's mostly from shock. In a day or two she'll see clearer."

"See clearer!" Stephen exclaimed bitterly. "Why, Helen, don't you know who the man is whom Stella has married?" he inquired.

"Yes, I know."

"Well!" he shrugged. "Don't you see it justifies our suspicions? For Laurel's sake I hoped they might never be justified. I didn't want the evidence which Morley Smith brought to my attention several years ago forced before me for consideration again. For Laurel's sake I've hoped there was that spark of controlling decency in her mother that wouldn't accept intimate relations with a man like Munn, even though she could endure his society. That hope has gone. This act of hers has destroyed it."

Helen gazed at Stephen and shook her head slowly, wonderingly. "You, too?" she murmured.

He didn't hear her.

"To think," he went on, still bitterly, still despairingly—"to think she chose, of her free will, existence with a man like Munn after Laurel had given up everything to be with her! To think she was willing to allow her child's wonderful love for her, her child's wonderful loyalty to her, to become shame and scorn! To think of it!"