But, on hearing this, she flopped from the chair to her knees, and clung round him just as she had clung when he was first questioning her.

“Will, don’t be mad and wicked, and go and take your life.”

“Why not?  D’you think there’s vaarlue in it to me now?”

He spoke quite quietly, but he looked gray, haggard, terrible, his clothes all stained and dirty from his open-air bed.

“Will, for mercy’s sake—­”

He shook her off, and began to count his money.

“I must keep this,” he said.  “I’ll pay it back later to the right quarter—­along with the equivalent of what I burnt.”

When he had finished packing he told her that he would settle with the lodging-house keeper, and he gave her a few shillings.

“That’s enough to get you home with.”

Then he picked up his bag and went out.

VIII

Mavis had bought a cheap blue veil to protect her face, and being, moreover, fortunate enough to find an empty compartment in the through coach to Rodchurch Road, she did not suffer during the journey from too curious observation of strangers.  She was going home, exactly as if nothing had happened.  Her husband had said that she was to go, and what else could she do but obey him?

When the station omnibus pulled up outside the post office, Mr. Ridgett caught sight of her, and gallantly came to assist her in alighting.  Evidently he noticed nothing strange about her appearance.  She at once announced the good news that Dale had not only been reinstated, but given a couple of weeks’ holiday; and Ridgett, genuinely delighted, squeezed both her hands.

“That’s something like.  Here, let me carry this upstairs for you.”

“No, thank you, please don’t trouble.  I can manage.”

Mr. Allen, the saddler, had come across from his shop, and she told him the good news too.  Mr. Allen hurried down the street to tell others.  Soon the whole village knew that Mr. Dale had triumphed, and that the Postmaster-General was granting him leave of absence as a special mark of favor.

Mary clapped her hands on hearing the good news, and was rapturously pleased at seeing her mistress home again; but she immediately required explanations.

“Oh, lor, mum, whatever have you done to yourself?”

“I have had an accident,” said Mrs. Dale.  “I fell down—­and it has given me a bad headache.  I don’t want any tea.  I shall go to bed early, and try to get a good sleep.”

And in truth, she was longing to sleep.  After the terrible ordeal of yesterday sleep seemed to be the one good thing left in the world for her.  But, notwithstanding supreme fatigue, sleep would not come.

Throughout that first night, and again on succeeding nights, she struggled beneath a suffocating burden of anxiety.  In the daylight she had been able to think of herself, but in the darkness she could think only of her husband.  She was haunted by the expression of his face, by the tone of his voice, when he had asked her if she supposed that existence was any longer valuable to him, and the sudden instinctive apprehension that she had felt then now grew so strong that she fought against it vainly.