darkness, saying, "I can't help
it, I am going, and I won't have Elspeth," and after that she slept in
peace. In the meantime Tommy the imaginative--but that night he was not
Tommy, rather was he Grizel, for he saw her as we can only see
ourselves. Now she--or he, if you will--had been caught by her father
and brought back, and she turned into a painted thing like her mother.
She brandished a brandy bottle and a stream of foul words ran lightly
from her mouth and suddenly stopped, because she was wailing "I wanted
so to be good, it is sweet to be good!" Now a man with a beard was
whipping her, and Tommy felt each lash on his own body, so that he had
to strike out, and he started up in bed, and the horrible thing was that
he had never been asleep. Thus it went on until early morning, when his
eyes were red and his body was damp with sweat.

But now again he was Tommy, and at first even to think of leaving
Elspeth was absurd. Yet it would be pleasant to leave Aaron, who
disliked him so much. To disappear without a word would be a fine
revenge, for the people would say that Aaron must have ill-treated him,
and while they searched the pools of the burn for his body, Aaron would
be looking on trembling, perhaps with a policeman's hand on his
shoulder. Tommy saw the commotion as vividly as if the searchers were
already out and he in a tree looking down at them; but in a second he
also heard Elspeth skirling, and down he flung himself from the tree,
crying, "I'm here, Elspeth, dinna greet; oh, what a brute I've been!"
No, he could not leave Elspeth, how wicked of Grizel to expect it of
him; she was a bad one, Grizel.

But having now decided not to go, his sympathy with the girl who was to
lose him returned in a rush, and before he went to school he besought
her to--it amounted to this, to be more like himself; that is, he begged
her to postpone her departure indefinitely, not to make up her mind
until to-morrow--or the day after--or the day after that. He produced
reasons, as that she had only four pounds and some shillings now, while
by and by she might get the Painted Lady's money, at present in the
bank; also she ought to wait for the money that would come to her from
the roup of the furniture. But Grizel waived all argument aside; secure
in her four pounds and shillings she was determined to go to-night, for
her father might be here to-morrow; she was going to London because it
was so big that no one could ever find her