Mrs. Hoxton, coming in with the small supper-tray, looked at her sharply two or three times, and when she had gone away again, Alex, turning to the glass, saw that her eyes were shining and looking enormously large and wide-pupilled.
"I believe I am happy tonight," she thought wonderingly.
While she ate her supper she tried to make a plan, but the excitement within her was growing steadily, and she could only think out eager self-justification for her own decision.
"It won't hurt any one else—nobody will mind. In fact, when they've got over the first shock, it will be a relief to them all. They've been very kind—Violet and Cedric—Violet most of all—but they haven't understood. They'd have understood better if I'd been a bad woman—lived with wicked men, or things like that. I suppose I should have done that too, if it had come my way—but then I never had the temptation. I had only little, mean, horrible temptations—and I didn't resist any of them. The other sort of sin would have made me happier—it would have meant a sort of success in a way—but I have been a failure at everything—always."
Her heart hammering against her side, Alex resolved that in this, her last disgrace, she would not fail.
Making no preparations, no written farewells, she rose presently and went to her room, where she put on her thickest coat and tied a woollen scarf over her head.
Then she went out.
It had stopped raining, and the air was soft and moist. It was a starless night, and when Alex got to the Heath and away from the lighted streets, it was very dark. Underneath her sense of adventure she was conscious of terror—sheer physical terror—and also of the deeper dread that her resolution might fail her.
"I mustn't—I mustn't," she kept on muttering to herself.
Then, as though reassuring somebody else, "But it's only like going for a journey—to a quite new place where everything may be different and much, much better ... or else to sleep, and never any waking up to misery again.... Just one dreadful minute or two, perhaps, and then it will all be over ... only a question of a little physical courage ... not to struggle ... like taking gas ... much easier if one doesn't struggle...."