ike the turn Ally's obsession had taken. It was _too_ morbid.

But when May came Alice lay in the big bed under the sagging ceiling
with a lamentably small baby in her arms, and Greatorex sat beside her
by the hour together, with his eyes fixed on her white face. Rowcliffe
had told him to be on the lookout for some new thing or for some more
violent sign of the old obsession. But nine days had passed and he had
seen no sign. Her eyes looked at him and at her child with the same
lucid, drowsy ecstasy.

And in nine days she had only asked him once if he knew how poor Papa
was?

Her fear had left her. It had served its purpose.

LI

There was no prayer time at the Vicarage any more.

* * * * *

There was no more time at all there as the world counts time.

The hours no longer passed in a procession marked by distinguishable
days. They rolled round and round in an interminable circle,
monotonously renewed, monotonously returning upon itself. The Vicar
was the center of the circle. The hours were sounded and measured by
his monotonously recurring needs. But the days were neither measured
nor marked. They were all of one shade. There was no difference
between Sunday and Monday in the Vicarage now. They talked of the
Vicar's good days and his bad days, that was all.

For in this house where time had ceased they talked incessantly of
time. But it was always _his_ time; the time for his early morning
cup of tea; the time for his medicine; the time for his breakfast;
the time for reading his chapter to him while he dozed; the time for
washing him, for dressing him, for taking him out (he went out now,
in a wheel-chair drawn by Peacock's pony); the time for his medicine
again; his dinner time; the time for his afternoon sleep; his
tea-time; the time for his last dose of medicine; his supper time and
his time for being undressed and put to bed. And there were several
times during the night which were his times also.

The Vicar had desired supremacy in his Vicarage and he was at last
supreme. He was supreme over his daughter Gwenda. The stubborn,
intractable creature was at his feet. She was his to bend or break
or utterly destroy. She who was capable of anything was capable of an
indestructible devotion. His times, the relentless, the monotonously
recurring, were her times too.

If it had not been for Steven Rowcliffe she would have had none to
call her own (except night time, wh