relief; and then, at breakfast, a numbness stole over her--suggested and
conveyed, perchance, by the apathy of her mother. Something had killed
suffering in Hannah; perhaps she herself would mercifully lose the power
to suffer! But the thought made her shudder. She could not, like her
mother, find a silly refuge in shining dishes, in cleaning pots and pans,
or sit idle, vacant-minded, for long hours in a spotless kitchen. What
would happen to her?... Howbeit, the ache that had tortured her became a
dull, leaden pain, like that she had known at another time--how long
ago--when the suffering caused by Ditmar's deception had dulled, when she
had sat in the train on her way back to Hampton from Boston, after seeing
Lise. The pain would throb again, unsupportably, and she would wake, and
this time it would drive her--she knew not where.

She was certain, now, that the presage of the night was true....

She reached Franco-Belgian Hall to find it in an uproar. Anna Mower ran
up to her with the news that dynamite had been discovered by the police
in certain tenements of the Syrian quarter, that the tenants had been
arrested and taken to the police station where, bewildered and terrified,
they had denied any knowledge of the explosive. Dynamite had also been
found under the power house, and in the mills--the sources of Hampton's
prosperity. And Hampton believed, of course, that this was the inevitable
result of the anarchistic preaching of such enemies of society as Jastro
and Antonelli if these, indeed, had not incited the Syrians to the deed.
But it was a plot of the mill-owners, Anna insisted--they themselves had
planted the explosive, adroitly started the rumours, told the police
where the dynamite was to be found. Such was the view that prevailed at
Headquarters, pervaded the angrily buzzing crowd that stood
outside--heedless of the rain--and animated the stormy conferences in the
Salle de Reunion.