He paused a moment in the parlour, and then, setting his teeth tight together, he went upstairs.

First of all he went into the bit of a room opening out of theirs, in which his baby slept.  He dearly loved the child, and many a time would run in and play a while with it; and in such gambols he and Sylvia had passed their happiest moments of wedded life.

The little Bella was having her morning slumber; Nancy used to tell long afterwards how he knelt down by the side of her cot, and was so strange she thought he must have prayed, for all it was nigh upon eleven o’clock, and folk in their senses only said their prayers when they got up, and when they went to bed.

Then he rose, and stooped over, and gave the child a long, lingering, soft, fond kiss.  And on tip-toe he passed away into the room where his aunt lay; his aunt who had been so true a friend to him!  He was thankful to know that in her present state she was safe from the knowledge of what was past, safe from the sound of the shame to come.

He had not meant to see Sylvia again; he dreaded the look of her hatred, her scorn, but there, outside her mother’s bed, she lay, apparently asleep.  Mrs. Robson, too, was sleeping, her face towards the wall.  Philip could not help it; he went to have one last look at his wife.  She was turned towards her mother, her face averted from him; he could see the tear-stains, the swollen eyelids, the lips yet quivering:  he stooped down, and bent to kiss the little hand that lay listless by her side.  As his hot breath neared that hand it was twitched away, and a shiver ran through the whole prostrate body.  And then he knew that she was not asleep, only worn out by her misery,—­misery that he had caused.

He sighed heavily; but he went away, down-stairs, and away for ever.  Only as he entered the parlour his eyes caught on two silhouettes, one of himself, one of Sylvia, done in the first month of their marriage, by some wandering artist, if so he could be called.  They were hanging against the wall in little oval wooden frames; black profiles, with the lights done in gold; about as poor semblances of humanity as could be conceived; but Philip went up, and after looking for a minute or so at Sylvia’s, he took it down, and buttoned his waistcoat over it.

It was the only thing he took away from his home.

He went down the entry on to the quay.  The river was there, and waters, they say, have a luring power, and a weird promise of rest in their perpetual monotony of sound.  But many people were there, if such a temptation presented itself to Philip’s mind; the sight of his fellow-townsmen, perhaps of his acquaintances, drove him up another entry—­the town is burrowed with such—­back into the High Street, which he straightway crossed into a well-known court, out of which rough steps led to the summit of the hill, and on to the fells and moors beyond.