Kate was plucking at her arm, for the service was over, and unconsciously she was impeding people who wished to pass from the seats.  With difficulty she rose and walked; the cold seemed to have checked the flow of her blood; she noticed the breath rising from her mouth, and wondered that she could have so much whilst those dear lips were breathless.  Then she was being led over hard snow, towards a place where men stood, where there was new-turned earth, where a coffin lay upon the ground.  She suffered the sound of more words which she could not follow, then heard the dull falling of clods upon hollow wood.  A hand seemed to clutch her throat, she struggled convulsively and cried aloud.  But the tears would not come.

No memory of the return home dwelt afterwards in her mind.  The white earth, the headstones sprinkled with snow, the vast grey sky over which darkness was already creeping, the wind and the clergyman’s voice joining in woful chant, these alone remained with her to mark the day.  Between it and the days which then commenced lay formless void.

On Tuesday morning Alice Mutimer came to the house.  Mrs. Clay chanced to be from home; Emma received the visitor and led her down into the kitchen.

‘I am glad you have come,’ she said; ‘I wanted to see you to-day.’

‘Are you feeling better?’ Alice asked.  She tried in vain to speak with the friendliness of past days; that could never be restored.  Her advantages of person and dress were no help against the embarrassment caused in her by the simple dignity of the wronged and sorrowing girl.

Emma replied that she was better, then asked: 

‘Have you come only to see me; or for something else?’

’I wanted to know how you were; but I’ve brought you something as well’

She took an envelope from within her muff.  Emma shook her head.

‘No, nothing more,’ she said, in a tone removed alike from resentment and from pathos; ’I want you, please, to say that we can t take anything after this.’

‘But what are you going to do, Emma?’

‘To leave this house and live as we did before.’

‘Oh, but you can’t do that What does Kate say?’

‘I haven’t told her yet; I’m going to do so to-day.’

‘But she’ll feel it very hard with the children.’

The children were sitting together in a corner of the kitchen.  Emma glanced at them, and saw that Bertie, the elder, was listening with a surprised look.

‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ she replied simply, ‘but we have no choice.’

Alice had an impulse of generosity.

‘Then take it from me,’ she said.  ’You won’t mind that.  You know I have plenty of my own.  Live here and let one or two of the rooms, and I’ll lend you what you need till the business is doing well.  Now you can’t have anything to say against that?’

Emma still shook her head.

’The business will never help us.  We must go back to the old work; we can always live on that.  I can’t take anything from you, Alice.’