ain force, from the sight of the
Thing, back into the streets. I can only describe the overpowering
strength of the temptation that tried me in one way. It was like tearing
the life out of me to tear myself from killing the boy. And what it was
on this occasion it has been ever since. No remedy against it but in
that torturing effort, and no quenching the after-agony but by solitude
and prayer.

"The sense of a coming punishment had hung over me. And the punishment
had come. I had waited for the judgment of an Avenging Providence.
And the judgment was pronounced. With pious David I could now say, Thy
fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off."

*****

Arrived at that point in the narrative, Geoffrey looked up from the
manuscript for the first time. Some sound outside the room had disturbed
him. Was it a sound in the passage?

He listened. There was an interval of silence. He looked back again at
the Confession, turning over the last leaves to count how much was left
of it before it came to an end.

After relating the circumstances under which the writer had returned to
domestic service, the narrative was resumed no more. Its few remaining
pages were occupied by a fragmentary journal. The brief entries referred
to the various occasions on which Hester Dethridge had again and
again seen the terrible apparition of herself, and had again and again
resisted the homicidal frenzy roused in her by the hideous creation of
her own distempered brain. In the effort which that resistance cost her
lay the secret of her obstinate determination to insist on being freed
from her work at certain times, and to make it a condition with any
mistress who employed her that she should be privileged to sleep in a
room of her own at night. Having counted the pages thus filled,
Geoffrey turned back to the place at which he had left off, to read the
manuscript through to the end.

As his eyes rested on the first line the noise in the
passage--intermitted for a moment only--disturbed him again.

This time there was no doubt of what the sound implied. He heard her
hurried footsteps; he heard her dreadful cry. Hester Dethridge had woke
in her chair in the pallor, and had discovered that the Confession was
no longer in her own hands.

He put the manuscript into the breast-pocket of his coat. On _this_
occasion his reading had been of some use to him. Needless to go on
further with it. Needless to retur