This Proud Heart by Pearl S. Buck Page A

run down—”
    But Lucile was taking the baby away from her. She put her back into the baby carriage and pulled down the net. “Come in, do—the child will never go to sleep at this rate, and if she doesn’t sleep she’s cross all day.”
    In the bright sunlight Lucile’s face looked hard and hostile.
    “I’m sorry,” Susan faltered. “She was crying so.”
    “Well, I don’t see what business it is of yours, I must say, Sue.”
    “No,” said Susan quickly, “no, of course, it wasn’t any at all…. I won’t come in this morning,” she added. “You’re not through yet.”
    “I never get through, with two children,” Lucile said. “You might as well come in. By the time I get things cleaned up, it’s time to feed the baby.”
    “No, I’ll come this afternoon, maybe,” said Susan. She smiled and turning at the foot of the steps waved her hand. Lucile was an old friend. She mustn’t mind Lucile.
    But when she reached her house she stood a moment uncertainly. That long deep look in the baby’s eyes—it was a racial look. It was not the solitary look of one soul. It was a human look which the baby was not yet individual enough to combat. Later when she grew more into her own being her will would strengthen and hide this nakedness. But now her eyes were microscopes, magnifying and revealing the beginning of life.
    She sat down on the top step of the little front porch and hugged her knees and stared into the garden, seeing none of it. She had already forgotten Lucile. She was remembering the child, feeling it, sinking her being into its immensity. And desire stirred in her, deep and blind, the intolerable, sweet, dark, solitary desire which she knew so well, which she could share with no one. She rose to her feet and she went slowly upstairs, past the bedroom door, up to the attic. She began mixing fresh clay and out of the clay she began to shape and mold a newborn child from whose minute unfinished features breathed an immense inexplicable helpless patience.
    The house fell away from beneath her feet and the attic roof was gone from over her head. She remembered no one and nothing. All the past months never were. The very years of her own life were lost. She was standing here making a child out of clay—out of clay shaping its life. She curved the clay into the shape of a newborn being, the bondage of the womb still upon its crouched back, its updrawn legs, its feeble entwined arms. Only the solemn head was large and free, lifted a little, looking out at unknown life with the awful patience. When it was finished she stared at it, half frightened. She did not know what she had made. She was afraid of it. This face, turned to her, was asking, “Why was I born?”
    “I don’t know,” she answered aloud. Her voice echoed in the empty room and suddenly she felt the dusk about her. She looked out of the window and there beyond the wood she saw the dark sunset, too red….
    “I’ve worked all day,” she thought, dazed, taking off her smock and smoothing her hair. Then she thought, “Mark will be coming home!” Mark! She had not once thought of him. But now, thinking of him, she felt the house was under her feet again, the roof over her head. She did not look at what she had made. She ran downstairs.
    She felt, hurrying to get Mark’s dinner, that she had been away for a long time. Up in the attic the thing she had made remained, a presence. It was there, a part of herself and yet separate from her. She felt exhausted, lonely, and yet content. She was suddenly impatient for Mark, hungry to feel his hand, his lips, to know he was there, solid and hearty, in the house, because she had been away from him so long. She flew about making ready for him. And when at last he came in and she heard his loud eager call, “Sue! Where are you?” she ran to him and flung herself upon him and held to him hard.
    “Oh, Mark,” she whispered, “oh, Mark—” What would she do if Mark did not come home at