y, that which is
I--and has lived but a poor score of years--would be done with for all
time. All whirls before me. 'Twas I who struck the blow--and I am a
woman--and I could go raving--and cry out and call them in, and point to
him, and tell them how 'twas done--all!--all!"

She choked, and clutched her bosom, holding its heaving down so fiercely
that her nails bruised it through her habit's cloth; for she felt that
she had begun to rave already, and that the waves of such a tempest were
arising as, if not quelled at their first swell, would sweep her from her
feet and engulf her for ever.

"That--that!" she gasped--"nay--that I swear I will not do! There was
always One who hated me--and doomed and hunted me from the hour I lay
'neath my dead mother's corpse, a new-born thing. I know not whom it
was--or why--or how--but 'twas so! I was made evil, and cast helpless
amid evil fates, and having done the things that were ordained, and there
was no escape from, I was shown noble manhood and high honour, and taught
to worship, as I worship now. An angel might so love and be made higher.
And at the gate of heaven a devil grins at me and plucks me back, and
taunts and mires me, and I fall--on _this_!"

She stretched forth her arms in a great gesture, wherein it seemed that
surely she defied earth and heaven.

"No hope--no mercy--naught but doom and hell," she cried, "unless the
thing that is tortured be the stronger. Now--unless Fate bray me
small--the stronger I will be!"

She looked down at the thing before her. How its stone face sneered, and
even in its sneering seemed to disregard her. She knelt by it again, her
blood surging through her body, which had been cold, speaking as if she
would force her voice to pierce its deadened ear.

"Ay, mock!" she said, setting her teeth, "thinking that I am
conquered--yet am I not! 'Twas an honest blow struck by a creature
goaded past all thought! Ay, mock--and yet, but for one man's sake,
would I call in those outside and stand before them, crying: 'Here is a
villain whom I struck in madness--and he lies dead! I ask not mercy, but
only justice.'"

She crouched still nearer, her breath and words coming hard and quick.
'Twas indeed as if she spoke to a living man who heard--as if she
answered what he had said.

"There would be men in England who would give it me," she raved,
whispering. "That would there, I swear! But there would be dullards and
dastards who would