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September the thing she had begun to dread happened. She found herself with child. To her bodily misery and disgust were added a misery and disgust more deeply seated, more hateful and appalling. How could she bear to bring this child into the world? How could she keep her mouth shut and allow Jerry to accept it as his? The whole thing was too horrible and monstrous to think about. And yet she must think about it. She must find some way to keep it from happening.

She was informed now about many things of which she had been ignorant when her first child was born. She had listened to the whispered confidences of other women and from their dark hints had learned that unwilling mothers had sometimes succeeded in doing what she now felt that she must do. Hitherto a powerful physical revulsion had prevented her from trying to interfere with nature in its course. Pain had always terrorized and maddened her; and from the idea of self-inflicted pain she shrank like a child. From the thought of such an instrument as a knitting needle her flesh writhed away as if the needle were heated white for torture.

Now, however, in the extremity of her need, she forced herself to think calmly of a knitting needle. She found one half buried in a crack of the cupboard drawer, hidden away under a frowsy accumulation of tangled scraps of twine, half empty spools, rusted fishhooks, odd washers, screws and nails, and crumpled grocery bills. Having pried it out with a hairpin, she laid it away in a safe place to be ready against the time when she could summon courage to try to use it.

There was another method, for her much less repugnant, which she decided to try first. She waited and watched for an opportunity.

One day Elmer, who had come over to give Jerry a hand with the tobacco cutting, left Pete, the chestnut mule, tied in