seven swords in her breast, slowly her heart of pride and passion died in
her breast, bleeding away. Slowly it died, bleeding away, and she turned
to the Church for comfort, to Jesus, to the Mother of God, but most of
all, to that great and enduring institution, the Roman Catholic Church.
She withdrew into the shadow of the Church. She was a mother with three
children. But in her soul she died, her heart of pride and passion and
desire bled to death, her soul belonged to her church, her body belonged
to her duty as a mother.

Her duty as a wife did not enter. As a wife she had no sense of duty:
only a certain bitterness towards the man with whom she had known such
sensuality and distraction. She was purely the _Mater Dolorata_. To the
man she was closed as a tomb.

Egbert came to see his child. But Winifred seemed to be always seated
there, like the tomb of his manhood and his fatherhood. Poor Winifred:
she was still young, still strong and ruddy and beautiful like a ruddy
hard flower of the field. Strange--her ruddy, healthy face, so sombre,
and her strong, heavy, full-blooded body, so still. She, a nun! Never.
And yet the gates of her heart and soul had shut in his face with a slow,
resonant clang, shutting him out for ever. There was no need for her to
go into a convent. Her will had done it.

And between this young mother and this young father lay the crippled
child, like a bit of pale silk floss on the pillow, and a little white
pain-quenched face. He could not bear it. He just could not bear it. He
turned aside. There was nothing to do but to turn aside. He turned aside,
and went hither and thither, desultory. He was still attractive and
desirable. But there was a little frown between his brow as if he had
been cleft there with a hatchet: cleft right in, for ever, and that was