He heard her speaking, but her words had no significance that pierced his thick and swift sensations.

“What have you done that you should have to pay so?”

“What have I done?”

“Or I?” she said.

He did not hear her.  There was another sound in his ears.

Her voice ceased.  Her eyes only called to him.  He pushed back his chair and laid his arms on the table, and bowed his head upon them, hiding his face from her.  She knelt down beside him.  Her voice was like a warm wind in his ears.  He groaned.  She drew a short sharp breath, and pressed her shoulder to his shoulder, and her face to his hidden face.

At her touch he rose to his feet, violently sobered, loathing himself and her.  He felt his blood leap like a hot fountain to his brain.  When she clung he raged, and pushed her from him, not knowing what he did, thrusting his hands out, cruelly, against her breasts, so that he wrung from her a cry of pain and anger.

But when he would have gone from her his feet were loaded; they were heavy weights binding him to the floor.  He had a sensation of intolerable sickness; then a pain beat like a hammer on one side of his head.  He staggered, and fell, headlong, at her feet.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Anne, left alone at her writing-table, had worked on far into Friday night.  The trouble in her was appeased by the answering of letters, the sorting of papers, the bringing of order into confusion.  She had always had great practical ability; she had proved herself a good organiser, expert in the business of societies and committees.

In her preoccupation she had not noticed that her husband had left the house, and that he did not return to it.

In the morning, as she left her room, the old nurse came to her with a grave face, and took her into Majendie’s room.  Nanna pointed out to her that his bed had not been slept in.  Anne’s heart sank.  Later on, the telegram he sent explained his absence.  She supposed that he had slept at the Ransomes’ or the Hannays’, and she thought no more of it.  The business of the day again absorbed her.

In the afternoon Canon Wharton called on her.  It was the recognised visit of condolence, delayed till her return.  In his manner with Mrs. Majendie there was no sign of the adroit little man of the world who had drunk whiskey with Mrs. Majendie’s husband the night before.  His manner was reticent, reverential, not obtrusively tender.  He abstained from all the commonplaces of consolation.  He did not speak of the dead child; but reminded her of the greater maternal work that God had called upon her to do, and told her that the children of many mothers would rise up and call her blessed.  He bade her believe that her life, which seemed to her ended, had in reality only just begun.  He said that, if great natures were reserved for great sorrows, great afflictions, they were also dedicated to great uses.  Uses to which their sorrows were the unique and perfect training.