One morning, the fifth day after her child's birth, she heard her husband,
whom she had scarcely seen during this trying time, pacing up and down in
the next room, swearing and sighing. She could only understand one word,
only one; that he repeated over and over again: the word "Homeless."

Then she knew. It had come to the worst.

She put her feeble hand on the little head of the new-born child, who with
his little serious face was quietly dozing, hid her face in her pillow and
wept.

After a while she said to the servant who attended the little one,

"Tell your master I want to speak to him."

And he came. With loud steps he approached the bed of the sick woman, and
looked at her with a face that seemed doubly distorted and desperate in his
endeavor to look unconcerned.

"Max," she said, timidly, for she always feared him--"Max, don't hide
anything from me; I am prepared for the worst, anyhow."

"Are you?" he asked, distrustfully, for he remembered the doctor's warning.

"When have we to go?"

As he saw that she took their misfortune so calmly, he thought it no longer
necessary to be careful, and broke out, with an oath: