down. He would die even now without breaking down, without
knowing what his feelings were, towards her. All his life, he had said:
'Poor Christiana, she has such a strong temper.' With unbroken will, he
had stood by this position with regard to her, he had substituted pity
for all his hostility, pity had been his shield and his safeguard, and
his infallible weapon. And still, in his consciousness, he was sorry
for her, her nature was so violent and so impatient.

But now his pity, with his life, was wearing thin, and the dread almost
amounting to horror, was rising into being. But before the armour of
his pity really broke, he would die, as an insect when its shell is
cracked. This was his final resource. Others would live on, and know
the living death, the ensuing process of hopeless chaos. He would not.
He denied death its victory.

He had been so constant to his lights, so constant to charity, and to
his love for his neighbour. Perhaps he had loved his neighbour even
better than himself--which is going one further than the commandment.
Always, this flame had burned in his heart, sustaining him through
everything, the welfare of the people. He was a large employer of
labour, he was a great mine-owner. And he had never lost this from his
heart, that in Christ he was one with his workmen. Nay, he had felt
inferior to them, as if they through poverty and labour were nearer to
God than he. He had always the unacknowledged belief, that it was his
workmen, the miners, who held in their hands the means of salvation. To
move nearer to God, he must move towards his miners, his life must
gravitate towards theirs. They were, unconsciously, his idol, his God
made manifest. In them he worshipped the highest, the great,
sympathetic, mindless Godhead of humanity.

And all the while, his wife had opposed him like one of the great
demons of hell. Strange, like a bird of prey, with the fascinating
beauty and abstraction of a hawk, she had beat against the bars of his
philanthropy, and like a hawk in a cage, she had sunk into silence. By
force of circumstance, because all the world combined to make the cage
unbreakable, he had been too strong for her, he had kept her prisoner.
And because she was his prisoner, his passion for her had always
remained keen as death. He had always loved her, loved her with
intensity. Within the cage, she was denied nothing, she was given all
licence.

But she had gone almost mad. Of wild and overweenin