Annie was in the midst of a religious crisis that had overwhelmed her like a typhoon.  She was one of those women who must have an outlet for passion.  It had taken merely physical form with her in the days of the old Squire, but since her elevation to the position of a widow-woman she had undergone “conversion.”  What she had hitherto accepted, much as her farm beasts accepted it—­as a clamorous necessity—­she now held to be a thing accursed.  Her position was an inconsistent one, as she was quick to uphold her ill-used righteousness with her neighbours; but that did not worry Annie, whose mind, blurred and wavering, never faced anything squarely.

Lawyer Tonkin had gazed into her eyes when he said good-night, and she had felt his moist and pudgy hand squeeze hers; but she knew it was the eyes and hand of the widow-woman, the owner, but for Ishmael, of Cloom Manor, with which the lawyer had dallied.  Her sense of her position was flattered and a glimpse of a yet more consequential one flashed before her, but no thrill went with it.  It was in the grip of what she would have thought a very different emotion that she had gone up to her room.  For Tonkin had told her of a noted revivalist who was coming through West Penwith, and already she felt the first delicious tremblings of that orgy of fear which should be hers.

Hers and another’s, for she was set on the redemption of her beloved first-born, her beautiful Archelaus.  Him she would lead to the heavenly courts and win forgiveness for the sin of his creation; he, the brand she had lit, should by her be plucked from the burning.  Crossing over to her window, she had leaned her hot brow against the pane, closing her eyes in an ecstasy of prayer.  It was very dim still in the house, but without the first faint pallor of the dawn was growing, and against it every solid object showed distinct and black.  And, opening her eyes, Annie saw, silhouetted darkly with the precision of sculpture against the paling sky, the figures of Archelaus and a girl.  He was half-lifting her over the stile whose stone steps crested the edge of the hill, and for a second the two figures stayed poised on the topmost step.  The girl seemed protesting, even struggling, though with slaps that were more horseplay than earnest, and the next moment the boy’s big arms had caught her and dragged her out of sight down on the far side of the stile.

The whole quick vignette was over in a flash, but Annie fell back from the window with all the egoism in her dulled nature torn awake.  A more normal mother, of a more refined type, might have thought what she had seen meant nothing but a rude flirtation; Annie’s blood told her differently.  If she had merely heard of the matter her lack of visualising power would have saved her from sensation; it was the sight of those two striving figures which had made her feel.  She moaned that her baby son had grown up and away from her, and she agonised over his soul, which she had planned to wrest for the Lord during the coming revival—­small heed would she get Archelaus to pay to his soul now this new thing was opening before him.  Her mind was conscious of a great emptiness where her scheme for the salvation of Archelaus had been waxing.