mpossible. The knife required skill and resolution; firearms
were unthinkable, and poison, under the new stringent regulations, was
hard to obtain. Besides, she seriously wished to test her own
intentions, and to be quite sure that there was no other way than
this....

Well, she was as certain as ever. The thought had first come to her in
the mad misery of the outbreak of violence on the last day of the old
year. Then it had gone again, soothed away by the arguments that man was
still liable to relapse. Then once more it had recurred, a cold and
convincing phantom, in the plain daylight revealed by Felsenburgh's
Declaration. It had taken up its abode with her then, yet she controlled
it, hoping against hope that the Declaration would not be carried into
action, occasionally revolting against its horror. Yet it had never been
far away; and finally when the policy sprouted into deliberate law, she
had yielded herself resolutely to its suggestion. That was eight days
ago; and she had not had one moment of faltering since that.

Yet she had ceased to condemn. The logic had silenced her. All that she
knew was that she could not bear it; that she had misconceived the New
Faith; that for her, whatever it was for others, there was no hope....
She had not even a child of her own.

* * * * *

Those eight days, required by law, had passed very peacefully. She had
taken with her enough money to enter one of the private homes furnished
with sufficient comfort to save from distractions those who had been
accustomed to gentle living: the nurses had been pleasant and
sympathetic; she had nothing to complain of.

She had suffered, of course, to some degree from reactions. The second
night after her arrival had been terrible, when, as she lay in bed in
the hot darkness, her whole sentient life had protested and struggled
against the fate her will ordained. It had demanded the familiar
things--the promise of food and breath and human intercourse; it had
writhed in horror against the blind dark towards which it moved so
inevitably; and, in the agony had been pacified only by the half-hinted
promise of some deeper voice suggesting that death was not the end. With
morning light sanity had come back; the will had reassumed the mastery,
and, with it, had withdrawn explicitly the implied hope of continued
existence. She had suffered again for an hour or two from a more
concrete fear; the memory came back to her of those shocking revelation