“My God!” she muttered, “my God!”
Then she mastered herself faintly, like a weary creature.
“It was my last hope—the queen, the gentle mother. To justify, through her handmaid, the passion of woman for man. It is ended. There is no good in the world—no truth—no virtue. Oh, my heart, my heart!”
She caught herself from the cry, in a rally of quiet fury; pointed to the door, her arm extended along the wall.
“You have killed my faith,” she said.
Her gesture was crowningly significant. Without a word, the girl stole fearfully from her shadowy covert—hurried across the room—passed from it, and was gone.
* * * * * * * *
Into the street she fled, ran a few paces, stopped, and looked wildly about her. Snow had begun to fall. The wind whipped her thin tattered skirts about her ankles. In all the mad night there was no beacon towards which she might make, for the little lightening of her despair. She glanced once about her; then crouched, with a dying moan, upon a doorstep.
Her face was buried in her hands when, an instant later, Ned silently came upon her. He stood, looking down.
Once, earlier in the evening, he had thought “She” (not the wretched girl at his feet) “might have dismissed me as effectually by gentler methods.” Yet, had he, for his part, shown more compassion towards this unhappy outcast—stained though she was—who lay here so committed to his mercy?