oat for
breath--sometimes uttering, with a sort of laughing shriek, the one word
in which seemed her only salvation--"Impossible!--utterly and entirely
impossible!"

She sat down for a moment, trying to think over more clearly the chances
of the case--but to keep still was beyond her power. She resumed that
rapid walk as if she were flying through an atmosphere of invisible
fiends. It felt like it.

Once, by a superhuman effort, she drove her mind to contemplate the
_possible_--the winds, the flames, the waves, and him struggling among
them. She saw the face which she had last seen so life-like--as a _dead
face_, with its pale, pure features and fair hair. And even that face
never to be again seen by her through any possible chance! For him to
be blotted out altogether from the world, and she left therein! "Oh,
God--oh, God!" The despairing, accusing shriek that she sent up to His
mercy!--May His mercy have received and forgiven it!

She began to count up the hours that must pass before she could receive
any tidings, good or ill. To stay quietly in the house and wait for
them!--you might as well have told a poor wretch to sit still and wait
for the bursting of a mine. No rest--no rest. The very walls of the
house seemed to press upon her and hem her in. She saw a bonnet and
shawl hanging up in the hall, caught both, and ran out at the front
door.

Out--out under the stars. She walked with her face lifted right up to
them, her eyes flashing out an insane defiance to their merciless calm.
The rain fell down thick, and it was very cold, but she never thought
of putting on the bonnet or the shawl; or, if she thought at all, it was
with a sort of longing that the rain might come and cool her through and
through, or the sharp wind pierce to her breast and kill her. Once she
had a thought of running a mile or two across the hills, and leaping
from some cliffs into the sea; so that, whichever way this suspense
ended, she might be safely dead beforehand--dead, too, in the same
ocean, washed by the same wave. All the foolish Romeo-and-Juliet-like
traditions of people killing themselves on some beloved's tomb, seemed
to her now perfectly real, possible, and natural. Nothing was unnatural
or impossible--save living.

How to live, even for a day, an hour, in this horrible, deathly
stagnation, she did not know. At last, walking on blindly through the
night, she came to the termination of the Thornhurst estate. Was she to
go ba