solute 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-thirst was upon her at this moment. It had driven her down to
the village that afternoon at the moment of John's arrival. But she had
no money. She had not dared to unlock the cupboard again, and she could
only wander up and down the bit of dark road beyond the 'Spotted Deer,'
suffering and craving.

Well, it was all done--all done!

She had come up without her candle, and the only light in the room was a
cold glimmer from the snow outside. But she must find a light, for she
must write a letter. By much groping she found some matches, and then
lit one after another while she searched in her untidy drawers for an
ink-bottle and a pen she knew must be there.

She found them, and with infinite difficulty--holding match after match
in her left hand--she scrawled a few blotted lines on a torn piece of
paper. She was a poor s