The doctor said nothing to that; but he asked whether her father had not died of consumption.  He certainly had; but nobody had ever been afraid for Molly; her lungs were always particularly strong.  Yes, but the lungs were not always attacked.  Tuberculosis, like other things, follows the line of least resistance.  Her brain could never have been very strong.—­“Her brain was as strong as yours or mine, sir.  You don’t know; she has had a miserable life.”—­Ah, any shock or strong excitement, or any great drain on the system, was enough to bring on brain fever.

In other words, what could you expect after so much agony, so much thinking, and the striving of that life within her life, the hope that would have renewed the world for her—­the fruit of three days and three nights of happiness?  It was a grave case, but—­oh yes, while there was life there was hope.

So they talked.  But she was far away from them, lost in her dream.  And in her dream the dead child and the unborn child were one.

By night the tumult in her brain was raging like a fire.  She had bad dreams.  They were full of noises.  First, the hiss of a thin voice singing from a great distance an insistent, intolerable song; then the roar of hell, and the hissing of a thousand snakes of flame.  And now a crowd of evil faces pressed on her; they sprang up quick out of the darkness, and then they left her alone.  She was outside in the streets.  It was twilight, a dreadful twilight; and perhaps it was only a dream, for it is always twilight in dreams.  She was all in white, in her night-gown, and it was open at the neck too.  She clutched at it to hide—­what was it she wanted to hide?  She had forgotten—­forgotten.

But that was nothing, only a dream, and she was awake now.  It was light; it was broad daylight.  Then why was she out here, in the street, in her night-gown?  She must hide herself—­anywhere—­down that dark alley, quick!  No, not there—­there was a bundle—­a dead baby.

No, no, she knew all about it now; there was a fire, and she had got up out of her bed to save some one—­to save—­“Nevill!  Nevill!” She must run or she would be late.  Ah, the crowd again, and those faces—­all looking at her and wondering.  They were running too, they were hunting her down, the brutes, driving her before them with pitchforks.  The shame of it, the shame of it!  Who was singing that hideous song?  It was about her, What had she done?  She had done nothing—­nothing.  She was bearing the sins of all women, the sins of the whole world.  It was swords now—­sharp burning swords, and they hurt her back—­her head—­Nevill!

The dream changed.  Mrs. Nevill Tyson was wandering about somewhere alone, always alone; she was walking over sand, hot like the floor of a furnace, on and on, a terribly long way, towards something black that lay on the very edge of the world and was now a cloud, and now a cloak, and now a dead man.

Two people were talking about her now, and there was no sense in what they said.