"Do not come in! Do not disturb her! Do you want to kill her?"
Juliana looked like a dead woman. She was whiter than her pillow and
motionless. My mother bent over her to place a compress in position.
The doctor, calmly and methodically, was preparing an internal lotion.
His face looked anxious, but his hands did not tremble. A basin of
boiling water was steaming in a corner. Cristina was pouring water from
a pitcher into a second basin, in which she held a thermometer. Another
woman carried into an adjoining room a package of cotton. In the air
was an odor of ammonia and of vinegar.
The slightest details of that scene, taken in at one glance, were
impressed on me indelibly.
"Fifty degrees, mind," said the doctor, turning toward Cristina.
As I heard no wailing I looked about me. _Some one_ was missing in the
room.
"Where's the baby?" I asked, trembling.
"He's there, in the other room," replied the doctor. "Go and see him,
and stay there."