"Oh, God, don't take him out of the world, don't let him die. Even if he has to marry Clare. Make him come back. Come back to me, some day." She remembered one dreadful night, soon after Martin Elliott's death, when she had wished Godfrey dead too, in a storm of jealous bitterness. She felt herself a murderess.
"Don't let him die. Don't let him die!" Her hands tore at the thick towels. Her imagination, beyond all control, tortured her with his pain. She had heard tales of prison camps. . . .
"Muriel, Muriel," called her mother's voice. "Where are you, dear? Come and help me to forward these telegrams to Connie."
With her hand to her mouth, choking the little sobs that broke from time to time, she stared round the room like a trapped creature. The wan light from the yard gleamed on the enamel bath, the metal rails, the polished taps.
"Muriel! Muriel!"
The house claimed her. She was bound to its routine as to a wheel. It would not stop, wherever Godfrey lay, his broken body nursed by alien hands.
"Come along, dear."
Slowly, as in a dream, she rose and turned the key.
XXVIII
The wind shrieked through the cutting and dashed itself against the crawling train. Up and up the steep curve of the gradient panted the blunt-nosed engine. Pushing forward slowly, it flung two streamers of fiery smoke out for the swooping hurricane to snatch and tear to ribbons. From the carriage window Muriel could see blank walls of grey rank grass, scarred by rough boulders and disfigured here and there by the blackened skeletons of burnt-out gorse. Once or twice a wheeling sea-bird with strong, outstretched wings swept across the sky, and twice since Aunby Station the embankment had dipped, revealing the huge desolation of the moor beyond. Only once she had seen through a gash in the hill-side the dark tumbling water of the wintry sea, whirled into patches of white foam and driven ruthlessly against the broken cliff.