‘Stop it!’ Mary cried once more across the shadows.  ’Nein, I tell you!  Ich haben der todt Kinder gesehn.’

But it was a fact.  A woman who had missed these things could still be useful—­more useful than a man in certain respects.  She thumped like a pavior through the settling ashes at the secret thrill of it.  The rain was damping the fire, but she could feel—­it was too dark to see—­that her work was done.  There was a dull red glow at the bottom of the destructor, not enough to char the wooden lid if she slipped it half over against the driving wet.  This arranged, she leaned on the poker and waited, while an increasing rapture laid hold on her.  She ceased to think.  She gave herself up to feel.  Her long pleasure was broken by a sound that she had waited for in agony several times in her life.  She leaned forward and listened, smiling.  There could be no mistake.  She closed her eyes and drank it in.  Once it ceased abruptly.

‘Go on,’ she murmured, half aloud.  ‘That isn’t the end.’

Then the end came very distinctly in a lull between two rain-gusts.  Mary Postgate drew her breath short between her teeth and shivered from head to foot. ‘That’s all right,’ said she contentedly, and went up to the house, where she scandalised the whole routine by taking a luxurious hot bath before tea, and came down looking, as Miss Fowler said when she saw her lying all relaxed on the other sofa, ‘quite handsome!’

     THE BEGINNINGS

     It was not part of their blood,
       It came to them very late
     With long arrears to make good,
       When the English began to hate.

     They were not easily moved,
       They were icy willing to wait
     Till every count should be proved,
       Ere the English began to hate.

     Their voices were even and low,
       Their eyes were level and straight. 
     There was neither sign nor show,
       When the English began to hate.

     It was not preached to the crowd,
       It was not taught by the State. 
     No man spoke it aloud,
       When the English began to hate.

     It was not suddenly bred,
       It will not swiftly abate,
     Through the chill years ahead,
       When Time shall count from the date
       That the English began to hate.