nd has gone of the little hour that is left; another inch
of the space that parts us from the sentence that knows no respite or
reprieve"? Was it not enough that the end must come, without the throb
of that monotonous reminder: "Nearer still!--nearer still!"

Neither spoke but a bare word or two, till the eleventh stroke of the
clock, at the hour, left it resonant and angry, and St. Sennans tower
answered from without. Then Rosalind said, "Shall I go out and see,
now?" and Fenwick replied, "Do, darling, if you wish to. But he would
tell us at once, if there were anything." She answered, "Yes, perhaps
it's no use," and fell back into silence.

She was conscious that the crowd outside had increased, in spite of a
fine rain that had followed the overclouding of the morning. She could
hear the voices of other than the fisher-folk--some she recognised as
those of beach acquaintance. That was Mrs. Arkwright, the mother of
Gwenny. And that was Gwenny herself, crying bitterly. Rosalind knew
quite well, though she could hear no words, that Gwenny was being told
that she could not go to Miss Nightingale now. She half thought she
would like to have Gwenny in, to cry on her and make her perhaps feel
less like a granite-block in pain. But, then, was not Sally a baby of
three once? She could remember the pleasure the dear old Major had at
seeing baby in her bath, and how he squeezed a sponge over her head,
and she screwed her eyes up. He had died in good time, and escaped
this inheritance of sorrow. How could she have told him of it?

What was she that had outlived him to bear all this? Much, so much,
of her was two dry, burning eyes, each in a ring of pain, that had
forgotten tears and what they meant. How was it that now, when that
Arkwright woman's voice brought back her talk upon the beach, not
four-and-twenty hours since, and her unwelcome stirring of the dead
embers of a burned-out past--how was it that that past, at its worst,
seemed easier to bear than this intolerable _now_? How had it come
about that a memory of twenty years ago, a memory of how she had
prayed that her unborn baby might die, rather than live to remind her
of that black stain upon the daylight, its father, had become in the
end worse to her, in her heart of hearts, than the thing that caused
it? And then she fell to wondering when it was that her child first
took hold upon her life; first crept into it, then slowly filled it
up. She went back on little inc