she did not question the paramount power of impulse. Not will,
but the strongest craving, had led her. Jenny could perhaps hardly
discourse learnedly upon such things: she must follow the dictates of
her nature. But she never accused Pa of responsibility. He was an
irresponsible. She had been left to look after him. She had not stayed;
and ill had befallen. A bitter smile curved Jenny's lips.

"I suppose they'd say it was a punishment," she whispered. "They'd like
to think it was."

After that she stayed a long time silent, swaying gently while her
candle flickered, her head full of a kind of formless musing. Then she
rose from the bed and took her candle so that she could see her face in
the small mirror upon the dressing-table. The candle flickered still
more in the draught from the open window; and Jenny saw her breath hang
like a cloud before her. In the mirror her face looked deadly pale; and
her lips were slightly drawn as if she were about to cry. Dark shadows
were upon her face, whether real or the work of the feeble light she did
not think to question. She was looking straight at her own eyes, black
with the dilation of pupil, and somehow struck with the horror which was
her deepest emotion. Jenny was speaking to the girl in the glass.

"I shouldn't have thought it of you," she was saying. "You come out
of a respectable home and you do things like this. Silly little fool,
you are. Silly little fool. Because you can't stand his not loving
you ... you go and do that." For a moment she stopped, turning away,
her lip bitten, her eyes veiled. "Oh, but he does love me!" she
breathed. "_Quite_ as much ... quite as much ... nearly ... nearly as
much...." She sighed deeply, standing lone in the centre of the room,
her long, thin shadow thrown upon the wall in front of her. "And to leave
Pa!" she was thinking, and shaking her head. "_That_ was wrong, when I'd
promised. I shall always know it was wrong. I shall never be able to
forget it as long as I live. Not as long as I live. And if I hadn't
gone, I'd never have seen Keith again--never! He'd have gone off; and my
heart would have broken. I should have got older and older, and hated
everybody. Hated Pa, most likely. And now I just hate myself.... Oh,
it's so difficult!" She moved impatiently, and at last went back to the
mirror, not to look into it but to remove the candle, to blow it out,
and to leave the room in darkness. This done, Jenny drew up the blind,
so that