n a heavy, drunken slumber. She knew that
sleep so well; he would not wake from it.

It gave her a sort of evil pleasure that they would find him like that
in the morning when she was gone. She went back to her baby and, with
infinite precaution, lifted it, still sleeping, cushion and all, and
stole past him up the stairs that, under her bare feet, made no sound.
Once more in her locked room, she went to the window and looked out. It
was just before dawn; her garden was grey and ghostly, and she thought:
'The last time I shall see you. Good-bye!'

Then, with the utmost speed, she did her hair and dressed. She was very
cold and shivery, and put on her fur coat and cap. She hunted out two
jerseys for the baby, and a certain old camel's-hair shawl. She took a
few little things she was fondest of and slipped them into her wrist-bag
with her purse, put on her hat and a pair of gloves. She did everything
very swiftly, wondering, all the time, at her own power of knowing what
to take. When she was quite ready, she scribbled a note to Betty to
follow with the dogs to Bury Street, and pushed it under the nursery
door. Then, wrapping the baby in the jerseys and shawl, she went
downstairs. The dawn had broken, and, from the long narrow window above
the door with spikes of iron across it, grey light was striking into the
hall. Gyp passed Fiorsen's sleeping figure safely, and, for one moment,
stopped for breath. He was lying with his back against the wall, his
head in the hollow of an arm raised against a stair, and his face turned
a little upward. That face which, hundreds of times, had been so close
to her own, and something about this crumpled body, about his tumbled
hair, those cheek-bones, and the hollows beneath the pale lips just
parted under the dirt-gold of his moustache--something of lost divinity
in all that inert figure--clutched for a second at Gyp's heart. Only
for a second. It was over, this time! No more--never again! And, turning
very stealthily, she slipped her shoes on, undid the chain, opened the
front door, took up her burden, closed the door softly behind her, and
walked away.

Part III

I

Gyp was going up to town. She sat in the corner of a first-class
carriage, alone. Her father had gone up by an earlier train, for the
annual June dinner of his old regiment, and she had stayed to consult
the doctor concerning "little Gyp," aged nearly nineteen months, to whom
teeth were making life a burden.