to but her sick husband's room. Yet she had been looking forward to having
at least one night's rest, and it exasperated her to think that there was
nothing for her but a hard pallet in the back room, and the certainty of
being awakened several times to attend to Ralph. She asked herself
passionately if she was always going to remain a slave and a drudge?
Hender's words came back to her with a strange distinctness, and she saw
that she knew nothing of pleasure, or even of happiness; and in a very
simple way she wondered what were really the ends of life. If she were good
and religious like her mother or her mother-in-law--But somehow she could
never feel as they did. Heaven seemed so far away. Of course it was a
consolation to think there was a happier and better world;
still--still--Not being able to pursue the thread any further, she stopped,
puzzled, and a few moments after she was thinking of the lady who used to
read Byron and Shelley, and who resisted her lover's entreaties so bravely.
Every part of the forgotten story came back to her. She realized the place
they used to dream in. She could see them watching with ardent eyes the
paling of the distant sky as they listened to the humming of insects,
breathing the honied odour of the flowers; she saw her leaning on his arm
caressingly, whilst pensively she tore with the other hand the leaves as
they passed up the long terrace.

Then as the vision became more personal and she identified herself with the
heroine of the book, she thought of the wealth of love she had to give, and
it seemed to her unutterably sad that it should bloom like a rose in a
desert unknown and unappreciated.

This was the last flight of her dream. The frail wings of her imagination
could sustain her no longer, and too weary to care for or even to think of
anything, she went upstairs, to find Mrs. Ede painting her son's chest and
back with iodine. He had a bad attack, which was beginning to subside. His