-- had left nothing for those that might come after him.
Ona was with child again now, and it was a dreadful thing
to contemplate; even Jurgis, dumb and despairing as he
was, could not but understand that yet other agonies were
on the way, and shudder at the thought of them.

For Ona was visibly going to pieces. In the first place
she was developing a cough, like the one that had killed
old Dede Antanas. She had had a trace of it ever since that
fatal morning when the greedy street-car corporation had
turned her out into the rain; but now it was beginning to
grow serious, and to wake her up at night. Even worse
than that was the fearful nervousness from which she suf~
fered; she would have frightful headaches and fits of
aimless weeping; and sometimes she would come home at
night shuddering and moaning, and would fling herself
down upon the bed and burst into tears. Several times
she was quite beside herself and hysterical; and then
Jurgis would go half mad with fright. Elzbieta would
explain to him that it could not be helped, that a woman
was subject to such things when she was pregnant; but
he was hardly to be persuaded, and would beg and plead to
know what had happened. She had never been like this
before, he would argue -- it was monstrous and unthink~
able. It was the life she had to live, the accursed work
she had to do, that was killing her by inches. She was
not fitted for it -- no woman was fitted for it, no
woman ought to be allowed to do such work; if the
world could not keep them alive any other way it
ought to kill them at once and be done with it. They
ought not to marry, to have children; no working-
man ought to marry -- if he, Jurgis, had known what a
woman was like, he would have had his eyes torn out first.
So he would carry on, becoming half hysterical himself,
which was an unbearable thing to see in a big man; Ona
would pull herself together and fling herself into his arms,
begging him to stop, to be still, that she would be better,
it would be all right. So she would lie and sob out her
grief upon his shoulder, while he gazed at her, as helpless
as a wounded animal, the target of unseen enemies.

[[167]]

p166 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p167w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p168

v?