I never saw such a picture, and it struck me suddenly I should like to
paint it, just as it was there, and call the thing "Maternity."

But no. What would be the good? No one, certainly not the British
public, would ever believe its truth.

They would think it a joke, and a grotesque one at that. "Beauty and
the Beast" would do for a name, I mused, or "Fact and Fancy."

Nothing could be more delicately soul-absorbingly beautiful than the
mother; nothing so brutally hideous as the child.

Suzee had sat down on the floor now, and the baby, still roaring, had
rolled on to its face on the ground beside her. Still she took not the
smallest notice of it; she laid one shapely hand on the small of its
back, as if to make sure it was there, and continued her conversation
tranquilly with Morley. How she could hear what he said I could not
tell. I could hear nothing but the appalling row the child made.

"Do take it away," I said after a few moments more, in an interval of
yells, during which the baby rolled, apparently in the last stages of
suffocation, on the floor. "I can't stand that noise."

"Ah!" said Suzee meditatively, lifting her glorious almond eyes to
mine, "you do not like my boy-baby?"

"I do not like the noise he makes," I said evasively, "and I don't
think he can be well, either."

"Oh yes, he is quite well," she returned composedly; "but I will take