ut I've just
had a telegram that mother is ill in London, and I must leave by the
next train"? There had been nothing to prevent her! At latest she should
have caught the evening train. Business was of no account in such a
crisis. Her mother might be very ill, might be dying, might be dead. It
was not for trifles that people sent such telegrams. The astounding
thing was that she should have been so blind to her obvious duty.... And
she said to herself, thinking with a mysterious and beautiful remorse of
the last minute of her talk with Mr. Cannon: "If I had done as I ought
to have done, I should have been in London, or on my way to London,
instead of in the room with him there; and _that_ would not have
occurred!" But what 'that' was, she could not have explained.
Nevertheless, Mr. Cannon's phrase, "It's a good thing you didn't go to
London," still gave her a pleasure, though the pleasure was dulled.

Then she tried to reassure herself. Sarah Gailey was nervous and easily
frightened. Her mother had an excellent constitution. The notion of her
mother being seriously ill was silly. In a few hours she would be with
her mother, and would be laughing at these absurd night-fears. In any
case there would assuredly be a letter from Sarah Gailey by the first
post, so that before starting she would have exact information. She
succeeded, partially, in reassuring herself for a brief space; but soon
she was more unhappy than ever in the clear conviction of her
wrongdoing. Again and again she formulated, in her fancy, scenes of the
immediate future, as for example at her mother's dying bed, and she
imagined conversations and repeated the actual words used by herself and
others, interminably. And then she returned to the previous day, and
hundreds of times she went into the inner room and said to Mr. Cannon:
"I'm very sorry, Mr. Cannon, but I've just had a telegram--" etc. Why
had she not said it?... Thus worked the shuttles of her mind, with
ruthless, insane insistence, until she knew not whether she was awake or
asleep, and the very tissues of her physical brain seemed raw.

She thought feebly: "If I got up and lighted the candle and walked
about, I should end this." But she could not rise. She was netted down
to the bed. And when she tried to soothe herself with other
images--images of delight--she found that they had lost their power.
Undressing, a few hours earlier, she had lived again, in exquisite and
delicious alarm, through