ed 'isself. Naw, 'e's
navver saaved 'issel."

She ceased. She gazed upon both the sisters now. Alice, her face white
and averted, shrank back in the corner of the sofa. Gwenda's face was
still. Neither of them had spoken.

* * * * *

Mary had tea alone that afternoon.

Alice had dragged herself upstairs to her bedroom and locked herself
in. She had flung herself face downward on her bed. She lay there
while the room grew gray and darkened. Suddenly she passed from a
violent fit of writhing and of weeping into blank and motionless
collapses. From time to time she hiccoughed helplessly.

But in the moment before Mary came downstairs Gwenda had slipped on
the rough coat that hung on its peg in the passage. Her hat was lying
about somewhere in the room where Alice had locked herself in. She
went out bareheaded.

There was a movement in the little group of villagers gathered on the
bridge before the surgery door. They slunk together and turned their
backs on her as she passed. They knew where she was going as well as
she did. And she didn't care.

She was doing the sort of thing that Alice had done, and had suffered
for doing. She knew it and she didn't care. It didn't matter what
Alice had done or ever would do. It didn't matter what she did
herself. It was quite simple. Nothing mattered to her so long as
Rowcliffe lived. And if he died nothing would ever matter to her
again.

* * * * *

For she knew now what it was that had happened to her. She could no
longer humbug herself into insisting that it hadn't happened. The
thing had been secret and treacherous with her, and she had been
secret and treacherous with it. She had refused to acknowledge it,
not because she had been ashamed of it but because, with the dreadful
instance of Alice before her eyes, she had been afraid. She had
been afraid of how it would appear to Rowcliffe. He might see in it
something morbid and perverted, something horribly like Ally. She
went in terror of the taint. Where it should have held its head up
defiantly and beautifully, it had been beaten back; it cowered and
skulked in the dark places and waited for its hour.

And now that it showed itself naked, unveiled, unarmed, superbly
defenseless, her terror of it ceased.

It had received a sanction that had been withheld from it before.

Until half an hour ago (she was aware of it) there had been something
lacking in her