"The Tenas Klootchman needs
her, she shall not die!" But the woman grew feebler daily, her eyes
grew brighter, her cheeks burned with deeper scarlet.
"We must fight for it now," said the doctor. And Maarda and he
fought the dread enemy hour after hour, day after day.
Bereft of its mother's care, the Tenas Klootchman turned to Maarda,
laughed to her, crowed to her, until her lonely heart embraced the
child as a still evening embraces a tempestuous day. Once she had a
long, terrible fight with herself. She had begun to feel her
ownership in the little thing, had begun to regard it as her right
to tend and pet it. Her heart called out for it; and she wanted it
for her very own. She began to feel a savage, tigerish joy in
thinking--aye, _knowing_ that it really would belong to her and to
her alone soon--very soon.
When this sensation first revealed itself to her, the doctor was
there--had even told her the woman could not recover. Maarda's
gloriously womanly soul was horrified at itself. She left the
doctor in charge, and went to the shore, fighting out this
outrageous gladness, strangling it--killing it.
She returned, a sanctified being, with every faculty in her body,
every sympathy of her heart, every energy of her mind devoted to
bringing this woman back from the jaws of death.
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