the outskirts of Greenwich, of
an old woman who had been in the service of her school. As a
long-legged girl of twelve she had stayed there once with her mother
for several days before going home for the holidays. She felt like a
wounded animal, and her one desire was to drag herself into a quiet
place to die.

It seemed to her then, under the first stupendous shock of finding that
Marty was with that girl, that death was the next certain thing. Day
after day and night after night, cut to the quick, she waited for it to
lay its cold hand upon her and snuff her out like a tired candle, whose
little light was meaningless in a brutal world. Marty, even Marty, was
no longer a knight, and she had put him into broadcloth.

Not in the sun, but in the shadow of a chestnut all big with bloom, her
days had passed in lonely suffering. Death was in the village, that was
certain. She had seen a little procession winding along the road to the
cemetery the morning after her arrival. She was ready. Nothing mattered
now that Marty, even Marty, had done this thing while she had been
waiting for him to come and take her across the bridge, anxious to play
the game to the very full, eager to prove to him that she was no longer
the kid that he thought her who had coolly shown him her door. "I am
here, Death," she whispered, "and I want you. Come for me."

All her first feelings were that she ought to die, that she had failed
and that her disillusion as to Marty had been directly brought about by
herself. She saw it all honestly and made no attempt to hedge. By day,
she sat quietly, big-eyed, amazingly childlike, waiting for her
punishment, watched by the practical old woman, every moment of whose
time was filled, with growing uneasiness and amazement. By night she
lay awake as long as she could, listening for the soft footstep of the
one who would take her away. At meals, the old woman bullied for she
was of the school that hold firmly to the belief that unless the people
who partake of food do not do so to utter repletion a personal insult
is intended. At other times she went out into the orchard and sat with
Joan and, burning with a desire to cheer her up, gave her, in the
greatest detail, the story of all the deaths, diseases and quarrels
that had ever been known to the village. And every day the good sun
warmed and encouraged the earth, drew forth the timid heads of plants
and flowers, gave beauty even to the odd corners once more and