“That was my mother you were talkin’ to?”

“Yes,” said Marcella, quietly, as she took the kettle off the fire.  “Now I do want you to have a cup of tea, Mrs. Vincent.  Will you, if I make it?”

The poor creature did not speak, but she followed Marcella’s movements with her weary eyes.  At last when Marcella knelt down beside her holding out a cup of tea and some bread and butter, she gave a sudden cry.  Marcella hastily put down what she carried, lest it should be knocked out of her hand.

“He struck me this morning!—­Charlie did—­the first time in seven years.  Look here!”

She pulled up her sleeve, and on her white, delicate arm she showed a large bruise.  As she pointed to it her eyes filled with miserable tears; her lips quivered; anguish breathed in every feature.  Yet even in this abasement Marcella was struck once more with her slim prettiness, her refined air.  This woman drinking and treating in a low public-house at midnight!—­rescued thence by a decent husband!

She soothed her as best she could, but when she had succeeded in making the wretched soul take food, and so in putting some physical life into her, she found herself the recipient of an outburst of agony before which she quailed.  The woman clung to her, moaning about her husband, about the demon instinct that had got hold of her, she hardly knew how—­by means it seemed originally of a few weeks of low health and small self-indulgences—­and she felt herself powerless to fight; about the wreck she had brought upon her home, the shame upon her husband, who was the respected, well-paid foreman of one of the large shops of the neighbourhood.  All through it came back to him.

“We had words, Nurse, this morning, when he went out to his work.  He said he’d nearly died of shame last night; that he couldn’t bear it no more; that he’d take the children from me.  And I was all queer in the head still, and I sauced him—­and then—­he looked like a devil—­and he took me by the arm—­and threw me down—­as if I’d been a sack.  An’ he never, never,—­touched me—­before—­in all his life.  An’ he’s never come in all day.  An’ perhaps I shan’t ever see him again.  An’ last time—­but it wasn’t so bad as this—­he said he’d try an’ love me again if I’d behave.  An’ he did try—­and I tried too.  But now it’s no good, an’ perhaps he’ll not come back.  Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do!” she flung her arms above her head.  “Won’t anybody find him? won’t anybody help me?”

She dropped a hand upon Marcella’s arm, clutching it, her wild eyes seeking her companion’s.

But at the same moment, with the very extremity of her own emotion, a cloud of impotence fell upon Marcella.  She suddenly felt that she could do nothing—­that there was nothing in her adequate to such an appeal—­nothing strong enough to lift the weight of a human life thus flung upon her.