"It's too late to save him.His mother has let him die! I tell you that because you're sympathetic, because you've imagination," Miss Ambient was good enough to add, interrupting my expression of horror.
"That's why you had the idea of making her read Mark's new book!""What has that to do with it? I don't understand you.Your accusation's monstrous.""I see it all--I'm not stupid," she went on, heedless of my emphasis.
"It was the book that finished her--it was that decided her!""Decided her? Do you mean she has murdered her child?" I demanded, trembling at my own words.
"She sacrificed him; she determined to do nothing to make him live.
Why else did she lock herself in, why else did she turn away the Doctor? The book gave her a horror; she determined to rescue him--to prevent him from ever being touched.He had a crisis at two o'clock in the morning.I know that from the nurse, who had left her then, but whom, for a short time, she called back.The darling got munch worse, but she insisted on the nurse's going back to bed, and after that she was alone with him for hours."I listened with a dread that stayed my credence, while she stood there with her tearless glare."Do you pretend then she has no pity, that she's cruel and insane?""She held him in her arms, she pressed him to her breast, not to see him; but she gave him no remedies; she did nothing the Doctor ordered.Everything's there untouched.She has had the honesty not even to throw the drugs away!"I dropped upon the nearest bench, overcome with my dismay--quite as much at Miss Ambient's horrible insistence and distinctness as at the monstrous meaning of her words.Yet they came amazingly straight, and if they did have a sense I saw myself too woefully figure in it.