y to get a good sleep."

And in truth, she was longing to sleep. After the terrible ordeal of
yesterday sleep seemed to be the one good thing left in the world for
her. But, notwithstanding supreme fatigue, sleep would not come.

Throughout that first night, and again on succeeding nights, she
struggled beneath a suffocating burden of anxiety. In the daylight she
had been able to think of herself, but in the darkness she could think
only of her husband. She was haunted by the expression of his face, by
the tone of his voice, when he had asked her if she supposed that
existence was any longer valuable to him, and the sudden instinctive
apprehension that she had felt then now grew so strong that she fought
against it vainly.

He intended to commit suicide. At first she had thought of all those
London bridges, with the dark rivers swirling through their arches and
eddying round their piers; then she became sure that he would not
drown himself. He was a vigorous swimmer--such a death would be
impossible to him. No, he would poison himself, or shoot himself, or
hang himself. Perhaps even now it was all over.

In his presence it had seemed impossible to disobey him. Whatever he
commanded she must do. But what pitiful weakness! Why, with instinct
prompting her, had she not resisted him, refused to let him leave
her, stayed with him in spite of blows, and been there to snatch the
cup or the rope from his hands, to thrust herself between the pistol
and his body?

By day she recognized that her anxiety was unreasoning, based on her
own emotions, or at least not logically derived from her knowledge of
his character. Of course he had taken the discovery of her secret far
worse than she had ever conceived as possible, when timorously
thinking of untoward hazards that one day or another might lead to
disclosure. But, even then, fully allowing for the effect of his
extreme excitement, would he, so brave and self-reliant a creature, be
guilty of an act that is in its essence cowardly?

She thought of his courage. He was as brave a man as ever breathed,
and yet you could not describe him as reckless or foolhardy. He was
wise enough to be chary of exposing himself to useless risks. So much
so that he had more than once surprised her by keeping quite calm when
she had expected and dreaded perilous energy. Especially she
remembered a day out on the Manninglea road when a runaway horse with
an empty cart came galloping toward them, a