Would she? All at once Meg fell on her knees with the rush of a new longing for him sweeping over her with unbearable strength.
"Barnabas, it's you I want—at last—I do want you!" she cried aloud. "Not what you do, but you yourself! Oh, it does hurt one to want like this! I want your arms round me, and your voice quite close to me. I want you so!"
She rose, frightened at the strength of the feeling that had, as it were, laid hands on her, and went to bed quickly in the dark.
It had come at last, the love that had been so long in coming! But it was no sweet boy Cupid wreathed in spring flowers, but rather an armed warrior who took at last what most maids give blithely in the natural time for courting. Was Nature, who never forgives nor forgets an insult, indemnifying herself for the very unnatural way in which Meg and the preacher had put their "earthly affections" out of the reckoning when they married? Ah, well, she had her revenge, as she always has. "How it hurts one!" Meg cried again. But Barnabas had known what that ache meant for nigh two years.
Was it too late now? No; God could not be so cruel. Barnabas would call that blasphemy. He never said, "God is cruel," whatever happened. Whatever happened? but why was she so terrified to-night? He would be set free, and nothing would happen. She would go to sleep and forget.
She did sleep, after a time, and dreamed of a stake with Barnabas tied to it, like an early "Christian martyr" in Foxe's Book, which she had studied when a child in Uncle Russelthorpe's library.
George Sauls was in the guise of an executioner, and kept heaping live coals on the preacher's head with one hand, while he held her back with the other, saying: "Apparently you don't think my swearing amounts to much, Mrs. Thorpe; but I hope you believe in that".
The horror she felt woke her (one has no sense of humour in a dream). She had slept only five minutes, though it had seemed hours. She could not bear to shut her eyes, and encounter that nightmare again. She lighted her candle, and, sitting up in bed, went on with her modelling, till daylight, which happily costs nothing, began to lighten the room.
Then she opened her window and looked out. Traffic was already stirring in the street below, she could see dimly the outline of the gaol through the London mist. The air was raw, but the horror that had possessed her fled with the darkness. With the breaking of the day Meg knew that she had entered into a new kingdom.