“What’s the matter?” exclaimed Ellen, standing up.  There was a certain desperation in her tone, as if she thought the tragic life of a household ought to have a definite closing-time every night, after which people could go to bed in peace.

“I forgot—­I forgot to take some medicine.  I must go and take it now.  And I don’t think I’d better come back.  I’m sure you’ll brush your hair better yourself.  I’m sure I tugged.  You’re so tired, you ought to go to bed at once.  Good-night.  Good-night.”  By the slow shutting of the door she tried to correct the queer impression of her sudden flight, but knew as she did so that it sounded merely furtive.

In her own room she undressed with frantic haste so that she could turn out the light and retreat into the darkness as into a burrow.  But everywhere in the blackness, even on the inside of the sheet she drew over her face as she lay in bed, were pictures of the aspects of evil the world had turned to her that day:  thirty years before, when she was stoned down the High Street of Roothing.  She was in the grip of one of her recurrent madnesses of memory.  There was no Richard to sit by her side and comfort her, not by what he said, for she had kept so much from him that he could say nothing that was really relevant, but by his beauty and his dearness, which convinced her that all was well since she had given birth to him; so her agony must go on until the dawn.

She must get used to that, because when he was married to Ellen she would no longer be able to sit up in her bed and call “Richard, Richard!” and strike the bell that rang in his room—­that rang, as it seemed, in his mind, since no other sound but it ever wakened him in the night.  Not again would he stand at the door, his dark hair damp and rumpled, his eyes blinking at the strong light, while his voice spoke hoarsely out of undispersed sleep.  “Mother, darling mother, are you having bad dreams?” Not again would she answer moaningly, “Oh, Richard, yes!” and tremble with delight in the midst of her agony to see how, when this big man was dazed and half awake, he held his arms upwards to her as if he were still a little boy and she a tall overshadowing presence.  In the future he must be left undisturbed to sleep in Ellen’s arms.  That thought caused her inexplicable desolation.  Rather than think it she gave up the struggle and allowed herself to be possessed by memory, and to smart again under the humiliation of that afternoon when life had made a fool of her.  For what had hurt her most was that she had gone out into the world, the afternoon it stoned her, in a mood of the tenderest love towards it.