of cloth of gold in
whose folds there would not lie any white triangle of a face that had to
be understood and conciliated. Her wish that it were so reminded her how
much it was not so, and she bent forward and looked over the girl's
shoulder at her reflection in the glass. "It is a face that believes
there is no foe in the world with which one cannot fight it out," she
thought. "Well, that is probably true for her. I, with my foes who are a
part of myself, am unusually cursed. If these young people have ordinary
luck they ought to make a fine thing of the world, and I will enjoy
standing by and watching them. Oh, I must make friends with her. We have
many things in common. I will talk to her about the Suffragettes. What
shall I say about them? I do honestly think that they are splendid
women. I think there was never anything so fine as the way they go out
into the streets knowing they will be stoned...." A memory overcame her.
"Ah!" she cried out, and laid down the brush.

"What's the matter?" exclaimed Ellen, standing up. There was a certain
desperation in her tone, as if she thought the tragic life of a
household ought to have a definite closing-time every night, after which
people could go to bed in peace.

"I forgot--I forgot to take some medicine. I must go and take it now.
And I don't think I'd better come back. I'm sure you'll brush your hair
better yourself. I'm sure I tugged. You're so tired, you ought to go to
bed at once. Good-night. Good-night." By the slow shutting of the door
she tried to correct the queer impression of her sudden flight, but knew
as she did so that it sounded merely furtive.

In her own room she undressed with frantic haste so that she could turn
out the light and retreat into the darkness as into a burrow. But
everywhere in the blackness, even on the inside of the sheet she drew
over her face as she lay in bed, were pictures of the aspects of evil
the world had turned to her that day: thirty years before, when she was
stoned down the High Street of Roothing. She was in the grip of one of
her recurrent madnesses of memory. There was no Richard to sit by her
side and comfort her, not by what he said, for she had kept so much from
him that he could say nothing that was really relevant, but by his
beauty and his dearness, which convinced her that all was well since she
had given birth to him; so her agony must go on until the dawn.

She must get used to that, because when he was married