She wrestled with her problem but morning found her no nearer its solution. As soon as daylight came she dressed and went to the hospital. Jean had come out from under the anaesthetic. He greeted her with a faint smile, infinitely pathetic in its unconscious bravery. She sank to her knees gazing into his face as though he had died and had come to life again before her very eyes. And as she looked deep into his brown eyes and pallid face she offered a prayer of thanksgiving to the Virgin for life for Jean. …
Dr. Newton found her there.
“Well, he pulled through all right and, barring setbacks or complications, he’ll be well before long,” he cheerfully told her.
After they left the room Mimi told Dr. Newton frankly of her financial position. It galled her to be forced to confess her poverty but she could see no other way out of it and she was unwilling to do other than be truthful about it.
“Oh, that’s all right,” he assured her. “We doctors are used to waiting for our money. And the Mannings have told me about you, I’m not worried. Pay me when you can—no, I’ll tell you what. Operations like the one I did on your baby are mighty rare. I’ve been practising medicine for fourteen years now and it’s the first one I’ve ever seen outside of a clinic. You pay the hospital bills and I’ll just dismiss the bill. The case is so remarkable a one that I’ll gladly let the fee go—”
She protested vigorously against his proposal. She was grateful, so grateful the tears stood in her eyes. But, following so closely upon her confession of poverty, it smacked too much of charity, and she would not, she could not permit that.
“Well, have it your own way,” he finally agreed. “But don’t hurry.”
She was touched by his kindness. He hurried away. When he was gone a dozen phrases of thanks came to her mind, vexing her that she had been too stunned by his generosity to think of them before he had gone. …
As if Fate felt ashamed of the blows it had dealt her, there came to Mimi several profitable jobs during the four weeks Jean was in the hospital. One of these lasted more than a week, the making of the trousseau of a girl who belonged to one of the old Philadelphia coloured families. She never knew that she had been recommended by Dr. Newton, but the money she earned enabled her to pay not only the hospital bill but to settle a part of the debt she owed Mrs. Williams. Now that Jean was out of danger and well on the road to recovery, Mimi worked with a song in her heart and happiness in the belief that her darkest days were past. And when he was returned from the hospital she bought little things for his amusement, toys, games, dainty bits of the foods he was allowed to eat. She was envious of everything which separated her from him even for a short time, she begrudged the hours they spent in sleep, for they robbed her, she felt, of so many moments of conscious knowledge of and contact with him.
The acuteness of her desire to be with Jean was rooted not alone in the to her more than miraculous escape he had had. It was, too, in the decision she had reached through that illness and the inevitability of execution of that decision pained her beyond measure. Mimi had faced during her dark hours when Jean’s life hung in the balance the practical situation before her. Ruthlessly she had cut away all the entangling meshes created by her love for Jean and had considered as dispassionately as she could the question as to what course would be for his greatest good. She found she could not approach the Hunters or her stepmother and she would rather have died herself than to have surrendered Jean to either of them. Those contingencies therefore were definitely out of the question.
So too was the possibility of her attempting to carry on the struggle she had now been making for more than a year. If only I could get some money saved and secure a steady income, perhaps start a small dressmaking establishment of my own, I could see my way clear. But these possibilities seemed to her much more remote than the probability of her jumping safely to the moon. Another thing was certain. There was little chance of her making any great progress in Philadelphia. New York to her seemed the only field in which any marked advance could be made, but here again there were the same problems if not greater ones.
Mimi found a certain grim amusement in remembering the tenuous plans she had so confidently builded and which now had tumbled about her. Realizing her own weakness for the first time, comprehending that she could not make the fight alone, she wrote tentatively of her distress to her Aunt Sophie. The second day after her letter was posted there came an answer—a warmingly cordial letter—scolding Mimi because she had not called upon her aunt for aid long before, offering Mimi whatever aid she needed. From the envelope there fell a cheque of generous size. And the letter ended:
“Alone you will have little trouble, especially if you come to New York. But with the baby
