er first: "I have my
voice!"

Of that which her voice was to achieve for her she never thought. She had
no thought of value, but only an eagerness to feel herself possessor of
something. Wilfrid had appeared to her to have taken all from her, until
the recollection of her voice made her breathe suddenly quick and deep,
as one recovering the taste of life.

Despair, I have said before, is a wilful business, common to corrupt
blood, and to weak woeful minds: native to the sentimentalist of the
better order. The only touch of it that came to Emilia was when she
attempted to penetrate to Wilfrid's reason for calling her down to Devon
that he might renounce and abandon her. She wanted a reason to make him
in harmony with his acts, and she could get none. This made the world
look black to her. But, "I have my voice!" she said, exhausted by the
passion of the night, tearless, and only sensible to pain when the keen
swift wind, and the flying squares of field and meadow prompted her
nature mysteriously to press for healthy action.

A man opposite to her ventured a remark: "We're going at a pretty good
pace now, miss."

She turned her eyes to him, and the sense of speed was reduced in her at
once, she could not comprehend how. Remembering presently that she had
not answered him, she said: "It is because you are going home, perhaps,
that you think it fast."

"No, miss," he replied, "I'm going to market. They can't put on steam too
stiff for me when I'm bound on business."

Emilia found it impossible to fathom the sensations of the man, and their
common desire for speed bewildered her more. She was relieved when the
train was lightened of him. Soon the skirts of red vapour were visible,
and when the guard took poor Braintop's return-ticket from her petulant
hand, all of the journey that she bore in mind was the sight of a
butcher-boy in blue, with a red cap, mounted on a white horse, who rode
gallantly along a broad highroad, and for whom she had struck out some
tune to suit the measure of his gallop.

She accepted her capture by the Marinis more calmly than Merthyr had been
led to suppose. The butcher-boy's gallop kept her senses in motion for
many hours, and that reckless equestrian embodied the idea of the
vivifying pace from which she had dropped. He went slower and slower. By
degrees the tune grew dull, and jarred; and then Emilia looked out on the
cold grey skies of our autumn, the rain and the fogs, and roaring Lond