where the Lord meant me to be. And now I haven't got anything left . . . and you all hate me. Yes, you do. And Philip does too sometimes. . . . He hates me. . . . You wanted me to marry him, and now see what's come of it. I'm even in this condition because you wanted me to be." She began to cry more and more wildly. "I'll run out into the street. I'll kill myself. I'll run away, and then maybe you'll be happy. I won't burden you any longer."
Emma was shaking her now, violently, with all the shame and fury she felt at Moses' encounter with this slatternly daughter-in-law, and all the contempt she felt for a creature so poor spirited.
"You'll do no such thing, you little fool! You'll brace up and behave like a woman with some sense!"
But it was no good. Naomi was simply having one of her seizures. She grew more hysterical, crying out, "You'd like to be rid of me . . . both of you. You both hate me. . . . Oh, I know . . . I know . . . I'm nothing now . . . nothing to anybody in the world! I'm just in your way."
Emma, biting her lip, left her abruptly, closing the door behind with ferocious violence. If she had not gone at once, she felt that she would have laid hands on Naomi.
Moses Slade, bound toward his own house, walked slowly, lost once more in a disturbing cloud of doubts. With Emma out of sight, the ardent lover yielded place to the calculating politician. He suffered, he did not know why, from a feeling of having been duped. The sight of Naomi so untidy and ill-kempt troubled him. He hadn't known about the child. The girl must
