ing her there, a
stone at rest on the bed of the stream, inalterable and passive,
sunk to the bottom of all change.

She lay still a long time, with her back against the thorn
tree trunk, in her final isolation. Some colliers passed,
tramping heavily up the wet road, their voices sounding out,
their shoulders up to their ears, their figures blotched and
spectral in the rain. Some did not see her. She opened her eyes
languidly as they passed by. Then one man going alone saw her.
The whites of his eyes showed in his black face as he looked in
wonderment at her. He hesitated in his walk, as if to speak to
her, out of frightened concern for her. How she dreaded his
speaking to her, dreaded his questioning her.

She slipped from her seat and went vaguely along the
path--vaguely. It was a long way home. She had an idea that
she must walk for the rest of her life, wearily, wearily. Step
after step, step after step, and always along the wet, rainy
road between the hedges. Step after step, step after step, the
monotony produced a deep, cold sense of nausea in her. How
profound was her cold nausea, how profound! That too plumbed the
bottom. She seemed destined to find the bottom of all things
to-day: the bottom of all things. Well, at any rate she was
walking along the bottom-most bed--she was quite safe:
quite safe, if she had to go on and on for ever, seeing this was
the very bottom, and there was nothing deeper. There was nothing
deeper, you see, so one could not but feel certain, passive.

She arrived home at last. The climb up the hill to Beldover
had been very trying. Why must one climb the hill? Why must one
climb? Why not stay below? Why force one's way up the slope? Why
force one's way up and up, when one is at the bottom? Oh, it was
very trying, very wearying, very burdensome. Always burdens,
always, always burdens. Still, she must get to the top and go
home to bed. She must go to bed.

She got in and went upstairs in the dusk without its being
noticed she was in such a sodden condition. She was too tired to
go downstairs again. She got into bed and lay shuddering with
cold, yet too apathetic to get up or call for relief. Then
gradually she became more ill.

She was very ill for a fortnight, delirious, shaken and
racked. But always, amid the ache of delirium, she had a dull
firmness of being, a sense of permanency. She was in some way
like the stone at the bottom of the river, inviolable and
unalterable, no ma