spected such a thought in his mind, and this proposal
had the effect of a stunning blow. She answered not one word: he said
his say and went out, and she knew she would not see him again for many
hours, perhaps not for some days; she knew, too, that he would say no
more to her on the subject, that it would all be arranged about the
child with or without her consent. His will was law, her wishes nothing.
For she was his wife and humble obedient slave; never had she pleaded
with or admonished him and never complained, even when, after her long
day of hard work, he came in at ten or eleven o'clock at night with
several of his pals, all excited with drink and noisy as himself, to
call for supper. Nevertheless she had been happy--intensely happy,
because of the child. The love for the man she had married, wondering
how one so bright and handsome and universally admired and liked
could stoop to her, who had nothing but love and worship to give in
return--that love was now gone and was not missed, so much greater and
more satisfying was the love for her boy. And now she must lose him.
Two or three silent miserable days passed by while she waited for the
dreadful separation, until the thought of it became unendurable and she
resolved to keep her child and sacrifice everything else. Secretly she
prepared for flight, getting together the few necessary things she could
carry; then, with the child in her arms, she stole out one evening and
began her flight, which took her all across England at its widest part,
and ended at this small coast town, the best hiding-place she could
think of.

The boy was a queer little fellow, healthy but colourless, with
strangely beautiful grey eyes which, on first seeing them, almost
startled one with their intelligence. He was shy and almost obstinately
silent, but when I talked to him on certain subjects the intense
suppressed interest he felt would show itself in his face, and by and
by it would burst out in speech--an impetuous torrent of words in a high
shrill voice. He reminded me of a lark in a cage. Watch it in its prison
when the sun shines forth--when, like the captive falcon in Dante, it is
"cheated by a gleam"--its wing-tremblings, and all its little tentative
motions, how the excitement grows and grows in it, until, although shut
up and flight denied it, the passion can no longer be contained and it
bursts out in a torrent of shrill and guttural sounds, which, if it were
free and soaring