Mavis walked along the bank (shadowed by the faithful Trivett) in the direction of her nook.  Still with the same detachment of mind which had affected her when she had looked at the stars in the Broughton Road, she paused at the spot where she had first seen Perigal parting the rushes upon the river bank.  Unknown to him, she had marked the spot with three large stones, which, after much search, she had discovered in the adjacent meadow.  As of old, the stones were where she had placed them.  Something impelled her to kick them in the river, but she forbore as she remembered that this glimpse of Perigal which they commemorated was, in effect, the first breath which her boy had drawn within her.  And now—–!  Mavis was racked with pain.  As if to escape from its clutch, she ran across the meadows in the direction of Melkbridge, closely followed by Trivett.  Memories of the dead child’s father crowded upon her as she ran.  It seemed that she was for ever alone, separated from everything that made life tolerable by an impassable barrier of pain.  When she came to the road between the churchyard and the cemetery, she felt as if she could go no further.  She was bowed with anguish; to such an extent did she suffer, that she leaned on the low parapet of the cemetery for support.  The ever-increasing colony of the dead was spread before her eyes.  She examined its characteristics with an immense but dread curiosity.  It seemed to Mavis that, even in death, the hateful distinctions between rich and poor found expression.  The well-to-do had pretentious monuments which bordered the most considerable avenue; their graves were trim, well-kept, filled with expensive blooms, whilst all that testified to remembrance on the part of the living on the resting-places of the poor were a few wild flowers stuck in a gallipot.  Away in a corner was the solid monument of the deceased members of a county family.  They appeared, even in death, to shun companionship with those of their species they had avoided in life.  It, also, seemed as if most of the dead were as gregarious as the living; well-to-do and poor appeared to want company; hence, the graves were all huddled together.  There were exceptions.  Now and again, one little outpost of death had invaded a level spread of turf, much in the manner of human beings who dislike, and live remote from, their kind.

But it was the personal application of all she saw before her which tugged at her heartstrings.  It made her rage to think that the little life to which her agony of body had given birth should be torn from the warmth of her arms to sleep for ever in this unnatural solitude.  It could not be.  She despairingly rebelled against the merciless fate which had overridden her.  In her agony, she beat the stones of the parapet with her hands.  Perhaps she believed that in so doing she would awaken to find her sorrows to have been a horrid dream.  The fact that she did not start from sleep brought home the grim reality of her griefs.  There was no delusion:  her baby lay dead at home; her lover, to whom she had confided her very soul, was to be married to someone else.  There was no escape; biting sorrow held her in its grip.  She was borne down by an overwhelming torrent of suffering; she flung herself upon the parapet and cried helplessly aloud.  Someone touched her arm.  She turned, to see Trivett’s homely form.