pelled to spend at the office, free. Now--An alert
movement within her was more eloquent than thought.

Sometimes she would believe that her present visitation of nature was a
punishment for her infringement of God's moral law; whilst at others
she would rejoice with a pagan exultation that, whatever the future
held in store, she had most gloriously lived in these crowded golden
moments which were responsible for her present plight.

Once or twice her distress of mind was such that she could no longer
bear the darkness; she would light the candle, when the confinement of
the walls, the sight of the orderly and familiar furniture of the room,
would suggest an imprisoning environment from which there was no
escape. As if to make a desperate effort to free herself, she would
jump out of bed, and, throwing the window up, would look out on the
night, as if to implore from nature the succour that she failed to get
elsewhere. If the night were clear, she would gaze up at the heavens,
as if to wrest from its countless eyes some solution of, or, failing
that, some sympathy for her extremity of mind. But, for all the
eagerness with which her terror-stricken eyes would search the stars,
these looked down indifferently, unpityingly, impersonally, as if they
were so inured to the sight of sorrow that they were now careless of
any pain they witnessed. Then, with a pang at her heart, she would
wonder if Perigal were also awake and were thinking of her. She
convinced herself again and again that her agonised communing with the
night would in some mysterious way affect his heart, to incline it
irresistibly to hers, as in those never-to-be-forgotten nights and days
at Polperro.

She heard from him fairly regularly, when he wrote letters urging her
for his sake to be brave, and telling of the many shocks he had
received from the persistent ill luck which he was seeking to overcome.
If he had known how eagerly she awaited the familiar writing, how she
read and re-read, times without number, every line he wrote, how she
treasured the letters, sleeping with them under her pillow at night, he
would have surely written with more persistency and at greater length
than he did. Occasionally he would enclose money; this she always
returned, saying that, as she was now in employment, she had more than
enough for her simple needs. Once, after sending back a five-pound note
he had sent her, she received a letter by return of post--a letter
which g