During the days of her carrying the second baby she had again the fierce
ugly attacks of temper that had shattered Sam's nerves, but having learned
to understand, he went quietly about his work, trying as far as in him lay
to close his ears to the stinging, hurtful things she sometimes said; and
the third time, it was agreed between them that if they were again
unsuccessful they would turn their minds to other things.
"If we do not succeed this time we might as well count ourselves through
with each other for good," she said one day in one of the fits of cold
anger that were a part of child bearing with her.
That second night when Sam walked in the hospital corridor he was beside
himself. He felt like a young recruit called to face an unseen enemy and
to stand motionless and inactive in the presence of the singing death that
ran through the air. He remembered a story, told when he was a child by a
fellow soldier who had come to visit his father, of the prisoners at
Andersonville creeping in the darkness past armed sentries to a little
pool of stagnant water beyond the dead line, and felt that he too was
creeping unarmed and helpless in the neighbourhood of death. In a
conference at his house between the three some weeks before, it had been
decided, after tearful insistence on the part of Sue and a stand on the
part of Grover, who declared that he would not remain on the case unless
permitted to use his own judgment, that an operation should be performed.
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