As the sunset and the dusk crept on she still sat silent and alone, sunk in a depression which showed itself in every line of the drooping form.  She was degraded in her own eyes.  The nature of the impulses which had led her to give Wharton the hold upon her she had given him had become plain to her.  What lay between them, and the worst impulses that poison the lives of women, but differences of degree, of expression?  After those wild hours of sensuous revolt, a kind of moral terror was upon her.

What had worked in her?  What was at the root of this vehemence of moral reaction, this haunting fear of losing for ever the best in life—­self-respect, the comradeship of the good, communion with things noble and unstained—­which had conquered at last the mere woman, the weakness of vanity and of sex?  She hardly knew.  Only there was in her a sort of vague thankfulness for her daily work.  It did not seem to be possible to see one’s own life solely under the aspects of selfish desire while hands and mind were busy with the piteous realities of sickness and of death.  From every act of service—­from every contact with the patience and simplicity of the poor—­something had spoken to her, that divine ineffable something for ever “set in the world,” like beauty, like charm, for the winning of men to itself.  “Follow truth!” it said to her in faint mysterious breathings—­“the truth of your own heart.  The sorrow to which it will lead you is the only joy that remains to you.”

Suddenly she looked round her little room with a rush of tenderness.  The windows were open to the evening and the shouts of children playing in the courtyard came floating up.  A bowl of Mellor roses scented the air; the tray for her simple meal stood ready, and beside it a volume of “The Divine Comedy,” one of her mother’s very rare gifts to her, in her motherless youth—­for of late she had turned thirstily to poetry.  There was a great peace and plainness about it all; and, besides, touches of beauty—­tokens of the soul.  Her work spoke in it; called to her; promised comfort and ennobling.  She thought with yearning, too, of her parents; of the autumn holiday she was soon to spend with them.  Her heart went out—­sorely—­to all the primal claims upon it.

* * * * *

Nevertheless, clear as was the inner resolution, the immediate future filled her with dread.  Her ignorance of herself—­her excitable folly—­had given Wharton rights which her conscience admitted.  He would not let her go without a struggle, and she must face it.

As to the incidents which had happened during the fortnight—­Louis Craven’s return, and the scandal of the “People’s Banking Company”—­they had troubled and distressed her; but it would not be true to say that they had had any part in shaping her slow determination.  Louis Craven was sore and bitter.  She was very sorry for him; and his reports of the Damesley strikers