I've only found out myself quite lately. But it's the thing
that saves one--I'm sure of that."

"There are other things, aren't there?" he hesitated.

"Nothing that one can count upon," she returned. "After all, other
people--" she stopped, but forced herself to go on. "Where should I be
now if I hadn't got to go to my office every day? Thousands of people
would tell you the same thing--thousands of women. I tell you, work is
the only thing that saved me, Ralph." He set his mouth, as if her words
rained blows on him; he looked as if he had made up his mind to bear
anything she might say, in silence. He had deserved it, and there would
be relief in having to bear it. But she broke off, and rose as if to
fetch something from the next room. Before she reached the door she
turned back, and stood facing him, self-possessed, and yet defiant and
formidable in her composure.

"It's all turned out splendidly for me," she said. "It will for you,
too. I'm sure of that. Because, after all, Katharine is worth it."

"Mary--!" he exclaimed. But her head was turned away, and he could not
say what he wished to say. "Mary, you're splendid," he concluded. She
faced him as he spoke, and gave him her hand. She had suffered and
relinquished, she had seen her future turned from one of infinite
promise to one of barrenness, and yet, somehow, over what she scarcely
knew, and with what results she could hardly foretell, she had
conquered. With Ralph's eyes upon her, smiling straight back at him
serenely and proudly, she knew, for the first time, that she had
conquered. She let him kiss her hand.

The streets were empty enough on Sunday night, and if the Sabbath,
and the domestic amusements proper to the Sabbath, had not kept people
indoors, a high strong wind might very probably have done so. Ralph
Denham was aware of a tumult in the street much in accordance with his
own sensations. The gusts, sweeping along the Strand, seemed at the same
time to blow a clear space across the sky in which stars appeared, and
for a short time the quicks-peeding silver moon riding through clouds,
as if they were waves of water surging round her and over her. They
swamped her, but she emerged; they broke over her and covered her again;
she issued forth indomitable. In the country fields all the wreckage of
winter was being dispersed; the dead leaves, the withered bracken, the
dry and discolored grass, but no bud would be broken, nor would the new
stalks that