er--the
kettle--scalded--hospital--dead--or only the shock of it, the blame?
Ah, but the detail matters nothing! It's what she carries with her; the
spot, the crime, the thing to expiate, always there between her
shoulders. "Yes," she seems to nod to me, "it's the thing I did."

Whether you did, or what you did, I don't mind; it's not the thing I
want. The draper's window looped with violet--that'll do; a little cheap
perhaps, a little commonplace--since one has a choice of crimes, but
then so many (let me peep across again--still sleeping, or pretending
sleep! white, worn, the mouth closed--a touch of obstinacy, more than
one would think--no hint of sex)--so many crimes aren't _your_ crime;
your crime was cheap; only the retribution solemn; for now the church
door opens, the hard wooden pew receives her; on the brown tiles she
kneels; every day, winter, summer, dusk, dawn (here she's at it) prays.
All her sins fall, fall, for ever fall. The spot receives them. It's
raised, it's red, it's burning. Next she twitches. Small boys point.
"Bob at lunch to-day"--But elderly women are the worst.

Indeed now you can't sit praying any longer. Kruger's sunk beneath the
clouds--washed over as with a painter's brush of liquid grey, to which
he adds a tinge of black--even the tip of the truncheon gone now. That's
what always happens! Just as you've seen him, felt him, someone
interrupts. It's Hilda now.

How you hate her! She'll even lock the bathroom door overnight, too,
though it's only cold water you want, and sometimes when the night's
been bad it seems as if washing helped. And John at breakfast--the
children--meals are worst, and sometimes there are friends--ferns don't
altogether hide 'em--they guess, too; so out you go along the front,
where the waves are grey, and the papers blow, and the glass shelters
green and draughty, and the chairs cost tuppence--too much--for there
must be preachers along the sands. Ah, that's a nigger--that's a funny
man--that's a man with parakeets--poor little creatures! Is there no
one here who thinks of God?--just up there, over the pier, with his
rod--but no--there's nothing but grey in the sky or if it's blue the
white clouds hide him, and the music--it's military music--and what they
are fishing for? Do they catch them? How the children stare! Well, then
home a back way--"Home a back way!" The words have meaning; might have
been spoken by the old man with whiskers--no, no, he didn't really