e the more. The futility of her proposals, of her daring to
think, after his fiat and the law's had gone forth, that there was any
way out of what she had done, for her or for him, drove him to frenzy.
And his wretched son was far away; so he must vent the frenzy on her.
The melancholia, which religion had more or less restrained and
comforted during a troubled lifetime, became, on this tragic night, a
wild-beast impulse that must have its prey.

He rose suddenly and came towards her, his eyes glaring, and a burst of
invective on his white lips. Then he made a rush for a heavy stick
that leant against the wall.

She fled from him, reached her bedroom in safety, and bolted the door.
She heard him give a groan on the stairs, throw away the stick and
descend again.

Then, for nearly two hours, there was absolute stillness once more in
this miserable house. Bessie had sunk, half fainting, on a chair by
the bed, and lay there, her head lying against the pillow.

But in a very short time the blessed numbness was gone, and
consciousness became once more a torture, the medium of terrors not to
be borne. Isaac hated her--she would be taken from her children--she
felt Watson's grip upon her arm--she saw the jeering faces at the
village doors.

At times a wave of sheer bewilderment swept across her. How had it
come about that she was sitting there like this? Only two days before
she had been everybody's friend. Life had been perpetually gay and
exciting. She had had qualms indeed, moments of a quick anguish,
before the scene in the Spotted Deer. But there had been always some
thought to protect her from herself. John was not coming back for a
long, long time. She would replace the money--of course she would!
And she would not take any more--or only a very little. Meanwhile, the
hours floated by, dressed in a colour and variety they had never yet
possessed for her--charged with all the delights of wealth, as such a
human being under such conditions is able to conceive them.

Her nature, indeed, had never gauged its own capacities for pleasure
till within the last few months. Excitement, amusement, society--she
had grown to them; they had evoked in her a richer and fuller life,
expanded and quickened all the currents of her blood. As she sat
shivering in the darkness and solitude, she thought, with a sick
longing, of the hours in the public-house--the lights, the talk, the
warmth within and without. The drink-t