ndeed, through all my troubles, I must say I have found one thing hold
good. In my experience, I have observed that people are oftener quick
than not to feel a human compassion for others in distress. Also, that
they mostly see plain enough what's hard and cruel and unfair on them in
the governing of the country which they help to keep going. But once ask
them to get on from sitting down and grumbling about it, to rising up
and setting it right, and what do you find them? As helpless as a flock
of sheep--that's what you find them.

"More than six months passed, and I saved a little money again.

"One night, just as we were going to bed, there was a loud ring at the
bell. The footman answered the door--and I heard my husband's voice
in the hall. He had traced me, with the help of a man he knew in the
police; and he had come to claim his rights. I offered him all the
little money I had, to let me be. My good master spoke to him. It was
all useless. He was obstinate and savage. If--instead of my running
off from him--it had been all the other way and he had run off from me,
something might have been done (as I understood) to protect me. But he
stuck to his wife. As long as I could make a farthing, he stuck to his
wife. Being married to him, I had no right to have left him; I was bound
to go with my husband; there was no escape for me. I bade them good-by.
And I have never forgotten their kindness to me from that day to this.

"My husband took me back to London.

"As long as the money lasted, the drinking went on. When it was gone, I
was beaten again. Where was the remedy? There was no remedy, but to try
and escape him once more. Why didn't I have him locked up? What was the
good of having him locked up? In a few weeks he would be out of prison;
sober and penitent, and promising amendment--and then when the fit took
him, there he would be, the same furious savage that he had been often
and often before. My heart got hard under the hopelessness of it; and
dark thoughts beset me, mostly at night. About this time I began to say
to myself, 'There's no deliverance from this, but in death--his death or
mine.'

"Once or twice I went down to the bridges after dark and looked over at
the river. No. I wasn't the sort of woman who ends her own wretchedness
in that way. Your blood must be in a fever, and your head in a flame--at
least I fancy so--you must be hurried into it, like, to go and make away
with yourself. My troubles neve