She had never suspected such a thought in his mind, and this proposal had the effect of a stunning blow.  She answered not one word:  he said his say and went out, and she knew she would not see him again for many hours, perhaps not for some days; she knew, too, that he would say no more to her on the subject, that it would all be arranged about the child with or without her consent.  His will was law, her wishes nothing.  For she was his wife and humble obedient slave; never had she pleaded with or admonished him and never complained, even when, after her long day of hard work, he came in at ten or eleven o’clock at night with several of his pals, all excited with drink and noisy as himself, to call for supper.  Nevertheless she had been happy—­intensely happy, because of the child.  The love for the man she had married, wondering how one so bright and handsome and universally admired and liked could stoop to her, who had nothing but love and worship to give in return—­that love was now gone and was not missed, so much greater and more satisfying was the love for her boy.  And now she must lose him.  Two or three silent miserable days passed by while she waited for the dreadful separation, until the thought of it became unendurable and she resolved to keep her child and sacrifice everything else.  Secretly she prepared for flight, getting together the few necessary things she could carry; then, with the child in her arms, she stole out one evening and began her flight, which took her all across England at its widest part, and ended at this small coast town, the best hiding-place she could think of.

The boy was a queer little fellow, healthy but colourless, with strangely beautiful grey eyes which, on first seeing them, almost startled one with their intelligence.  He was shy and almost obstinately silent, but when I talked to him on certain subjects the intense suppressed interest he felt would show itself in his face, and by and by it would burst out in speech—­an impetuous torrent of words in a high shrill voice.  He reminded me of a lark in a cage.  Watch it in its prison when the sun shines forth—­when, like the captive falcon in Dante, it is “cheated by a gleam”—­its wing-tremblings, and all its little tentative motions, how the excitement grows and grows in it, until, although shut up and flight denied it, the passion can no longer be contained and it bursts out in a torrent of shrill and guttural sounds, which, if it were free and soaring, would be its song.  His passion was all for nature, and his mother out of her small earnings had managed to get quite a number of volumes together for him.  These he read and re-read until he knew them by heart; and on Sundays, or any other day they could take, those two lonely ones would take a basket containing their luncheon, her work and a book or two, and set out on a long ramble along the coast to pass the day in some solitary spot among the sandhills.