She went down again into the parlor, eager to talk—­no matter how idly, no matter on what trifles.  The room was empty.  Perhaps Mrs. Wragge had gone to her work—­perhaps she was too tired to talk.  Magdalen took her hat from the table and went out.  The sea that she had shrunk from, a few hours since, looked friendly now.  How lovely it was in its cool evening blue!  What a god-like joy in the happy multitude of waves leaping up to the light of heaven!

She stayed out until the night fell and the stars appeared.  The night steadied her.

By slow degrees her mind recovered its balance and she looked her position unflinchingly in the face.  The vain hope that accident might defeat the very end for which, of her own free-will, she had ceaselessly plotted and toiled, vanished and left her; self-dissipated in its own weakness.  She knew the true alternative, and faced it.  On one side was the revolting ordeal of the marriage; on the other, the abandonment of her purpose.  Was it too late to choose between the sacrifice of the purpose and the sacrifice of herself?  Yes! too late.  The backward path had closed behind her.  Time that no wish could change, Time that no prayers could recall, had made her purpose a part of herself:  once she had governed it; now it governed her.  The more she shrank, the harder she struggled, the more mercilessly it drove her on.  No other feeling in her was strong enough to master it—­not even the horror that was maddening her—­the horror of her marriage.

Toward nine o’clock she went back to the house.

“Walking again!” said Mrs. Wragge, meeting her at the door.  “Come in and sit down, my dear.  How tired you must be!”

Magdalen smiled, and patted Mrs. Wragge kindly on the shoulder.

“You forget how strong I am,” she said.  “Nothing hurts me.”

She lit her candle and went upstairs again into her room.  As she returned to the old place by her toilet-table, the vain hope in the three days of delay, the vain hope of deliverance by accident, came back to her—­this time in a form more tangible than the form which it had hitherto worn.

“Friday, Saturday, Sunday.  Something may happen to him; something may happen to me.  Something serious; something fatal.  One of us may die.”

A sudden change came over her face.  She shivered, though there was no cold in the air.  She started, though there was no noise to alarm her.

“One of us may die.  I may be the one.”

She fell into deep thought, roused herself after a while, and, opening the door, called to Mrs. Wragge to come and speak to her.

“You were right in thinking I should fatigue myself,” she said.  “My walk has been a little too much for me.  I feel tired, and I am going to bed.  Good-night.”  She kissed Mrs. Wragge and softly closed the door again.