ard her ask, "Don't you feel well?"

"No. I'm--rather giddy."

She watched the knife as Helen carved, and the beauty of its slimness
gave her joy; but suddenly the blade slipped, and she saw blood on
Helen's hand and, rushing from the table to the garden, she stood there
panting.

"It's nothing," Helen shouted through the window. "Just a scratch."

"Oh, blood! It's awful!" She leaned on the gate and sobbed feebly,
expecting to be sick. She could not make anybody bleed: it was terrible
to see red blood.

Trembling and holding to the banisters, she went upstairs and lay down
on her bed, and presently, through her subsiding sobs, there came a
trickle of laughter born of the elfish humour which would not be
suppressed. She could not kill George, but she must pay him out, and she
was laughing at herself because she had discovered his real offence. It
was not his kisses, not even his disdain of what he took, though that
enraged her: it was his words as he cast her off and left her. She sat
up on the bed, clenching her small hands. How dared he? How dared he?
She could not ignore those words and she would let him know that he had
been her plaything all the time.

"All the time, George, my dear," she muttered, nodding her black head.
"I'll just write you a little letter, telling you!"

Kneeling before the table by her window, she wrote her foolish message
and slipped it inside her dress: then, with a satisfaction which brought
peace, she lay down again and slept.

She waked to find Helen at her bedside, a cup of tea in her hand.

"Oh--I've been to sleep?"

"Yes. It's four o'clock. Are you better?"

"Yes."

"Lily is here. John's gone to town. It's market-day."

"Market-day!" She laughed. "George will get drunk. Perhaps he'll fall
off his horse and be killed. But I'd rather he was killed tomorrow.
Perhaps a wild bull will gore him--right horn, left horn, right
horn--Oh, my head aches!"

"Don't waggle it about."

"I was just showing you what the bull would do to George."

"Leave the poor man alone."

But that was what Miriam could not do, and she waited eagerly for the
dark.

The new green of the larches was absorbed into the blackness of night
when she went through them silently. She had no fear of meeting George,
but she must wait an opportunity of stealing across the courtyard and
throwing the letter through the open door, so she paused cautiously at
the edge of the wood and saw the parlour lights turnin