dispensed with now that they were living, so to say, in a state of
siege.

She was fond of the two girls, as we have said; yet there were times
when she would have preferred their room to their company--would have
preferred a long, solitary walk. She was fond of her friend and
entertainer; yet that cheery person's voluble tongue was apt to be
sometimes a trifle oppressive. She liked her neighbours and they liked
her; yet the constant and generally harmless gossip of the other
settlers' wives and daughters, who were ever visiting or being visited
by them, regarding work, native servants, babies, engagements, the war,
and so forth, would strike her as boring and wearisome to the last
degree. There were times when she would have given much to be alone--
absolutely and entirely alone--and think.

For she had enough to think about now, enough to occupy every moment of
her thoughts, day and night. But was it good that it should be so--was
it good?

"I am a wicked woman!" she would say to herself, half bitterly, half
sadly, but never regretfully--"a fearfully wicked woman. That is why I
feel so restless, so discontented."

Never regretfully? No; for the sudden rush of the new dawn which had
swept in upon her life had spread over it an enchanted glamour that was
all-powerful in its surpassing sweetness. That first kiss--alone in the
darkness of that peril-haunted midnight--had kindled the Fire of the
Live Coal; that one long, golden day, they two alone together, had
riveted the burning link. There was no room for regret.

Yet there were times when she was a prey to the most poignant anguish--a
woman of Eanswyth's natural and moral fibre could never escape that--
could never throw herself callously, unthinkingly, into the perilous
gulf. A mixture of sensuousness and spirituality, the spirit would ever
be warring against the mind--which two are _not_ convertible terms by
any means--and often in the dark, silent hours of night a sense of the
black horror of her position would come upon her in full force. "Heaven
help me!" she would cry half aloud in the fervour of her agony. "Heaven
help me!" And then would be added the mental reservation, "But _not_
through the means of loss--not through the loss of this new and
enthralling influence which renders the keenest of mental anguish,
engrossingly, indescribably sweet!"

"Save me from the effect, but, oh, remove not the cause!" A strange, a
paradoxical prayer, but a