ter to Peacey,
the village people would go through her story all over again to try to
find out what this could possibly mean, and would remember that it was a
tragedy, and once more she would be the victim of that hostility which
the happy feel for the unhappy. Yet she found herself making a queer
distraught mask of her face and saying theatrically, "Oh, Mr. Hemming,
_please_, please let this letter go ..." and, when he granted the
favour, as she knew quite well he would have done to just half as much
imploration, she went out of the shop breathing heavily and audibly.

"Why am I like this?" she asked herself. "Ah, I see! So that I can say
afterwards that I did everything I could to get him back, even to the
extent of turning people against me, and can settle down to being happy
with Richard. Oh, Roger, I am a cold devil to you...." She was indeed.
For when she received Peacey's letter saying blandly that there was
nothing in his life of which he need feel ashamed, and realised that the
game was up and she was powerless, she was glad. She sat down and wrote
her bluffing answer, a warning that if the child was not sent back
within a week she would come down to Dawlish and fetch it, with an
infamous fear lest it might be efficacious. And when Peacey wrote back,
pointing out that Richard was legally his child, and that he would be
taken out of her custody if she went on making this fuss about Roger,
she chose immediately. She tore the letter into small pieces and dropped
them into the heart of the fire, and knelt by the grate until the flame
died. Though the boy was still out at school she lifted up her voice and
cried out seductively, serenely, "Richard! Richard!"

What is this thing, the soul? It blows hot, it blows cold, it reels
with the drunkenness of exaltation for some slight event no denser than
a dream, it hoods itself with penitence for some act that the mind can
hardly remember; and yet its judgments are the voice of absolute wisdom.
She did not care at all for Roger. When at nights she used to see in the
blackness the little figure standing in his shirt, beating the dark air
with his fists, as Susan told her he used to do when Peacey woke him
suddenly out of his sleep to frighten him, her pity, was flavourless and
abstract. That she had unwittingly sent the child to its doom caused her
no earthquake of remorse but a storm of annoyance. Yet she knew every
hour of the day that her soul had taken a decision to mou