xtraordinary fact
that there never once occurred to her that possibility, the thought of
which, she afterwards realised, had made Peacey smile. The truth was
that she never thought directly of that night's horror, but, perhaps
because of that fantasy about the wounded youth which had vexed her
delirium, she always disguised it in her mind as an encounter with a
wild beast, and the expectation of human issue no more troubled her than
it would a woman who had been gored by a boar.

It was partly for this reason, and partly because of a certain ominous
peculiarity of her physical condition, that she did not know for some
months that she was going to have Peacey's child. It was indeed a rainy
December morning when she heard a knock at the door and knew it was
little Jack Harken, because he was whistling "Good King Wenceslas," as
he always did, and would not go to answer him, although she knew
Grandmother and Peggy were both in the dairy, because she was distraught
with her own degradation. Her encounter with Peacey had been like being
shown some picture from a foul book and being obliged to stare at it
till it was branded on her mind, so that whenever she looked at it she
saw it also, stamped on the real image like the superscription on a
palimpsest. But now she felt as if she herself had become a picture in a
foul book. And she was quite insane with a sense of guilt towards
Richard. This discovery had, of necessity, meant that she must wean him,
and her obsession interpreted their conflict between them that had
naturally followed as a wrangle between them as to her responsibility
for this evil. Now he was lying in his cot screaming with rage, his
clean frock and the sheets running with the rivulets of milk that he had
spat out and struck from the teat of the bottle she was forcing on him,
and she was sobbing, for this sort of thing had been going on for days,
"I can't help it, darling, I can't help it."

Then Jackie began to thump rhythmically on the door below, and she ran
down, maddened with so much noise, and snatched the letter he held out
to her. At the writing on the envelope her heart stood still. She
recanted all she had lately thought of Harry. Hatred and resentment fell
from her. The promise of her lover's near presence came on her like a
south wind blowing over flowers. At his message that he was waiting for
her on the marshes under the hillside she remembered what love is--a
shelter, a wing, a witty clemency t