“She’s the good fairy of the Island.”

“She grew all them Sweet Williams in my garden in one night, when I first come ’ere and was ’omesick for Devon.”

“The law’s always after saints and fairies, always ’as bin.”

“But the law can’t catch ’er.”

“The law has driven her away,” said Sarah Brown.  “There is no magic now on Mitten Island.”

She staggered through the open door of the Shop.  “This is Richard’s house,” she said to herself as she entered, and felt doubly alone because Richard was far away, riding to his True Love.  She struck her last match, lit the lantern, and looked round.  There was no sound in the house of Living Alone, she thought there would never again be any magic sound there to penetrate to her imprisoned hearing.  The aprons hanging from the ceiling near the door flapped in the cold wind, and she thought they were like grey bats in a cave.  The breeze blew out the open lantern.  Ah, how desolate, how desolate....

A piece of paper was impaled upon the counter by means of a headless hatpin.  There was something very largely and badly written on it.  Sarah Brown read:  “Well Soup it looks like my Night’s come and what dyou think Sherry’s come too.  Im an me as gone off to a place e knows that’s a fine place for such a boy as Elbert to be born in so no more at present from your true Peony.”

Sarah Brown climbed up the short stairway, painful step by painful step, to her cell.  She sat on her bed holding her throbbing side, and breathing with fearful caution.  She looked at the empty grate.  She put a cigarette in her mouth, the unconscious and futile answer of the Dweller Alone to that blind hunger for comfort.  But she had no matches, and presently, dimly conscious that her groping for comfort had lacked result, she absently put another cigarette into her mouth, and then felt a fool.

She stared at the cold window.  The sky seemed to be nailed carelessly to it by means of a crooked star or two.

These are the terrible nights of Living Alone, when you have fever and sometimes think that your beloved stands in the doorway to bring you comfort, and sometimes think that you have no beloved, and that there is no one left in all the world, no word, no warmth, nor ever a kindly candle to be lighted in that spotted darkness that walls up your hot sight.  Again on those nights you dream that you have already done those genial things your body cries for, or perhaps That Other has done them.  The fire is built and alight at last, a cup of something cool and beautifully sour stands ready to your hand, you can hear the delicious rattle of china on a tray in the passage—­someone coming with food you would love to look at, and presently perhaps to eat ... when you feel better.  But again and again your eyes open on the cold dumb darkness, and there is nothing but the wind and strange sinister emptiness creaking on the stair.

These are the terrible nights of Living Alone, yet no real lover of that house and of that state would ever exchange one of those haunted and desert nights for a night spent watched, in soft warm places.