When Farnsworth had left her in the afternoon, Delia crouched in the bottom of the grave she was digging, her first feeling being an unreasoning desire for concealment. She thought she should remain passive if the sides of the pit collapsed and buried her. In the old days before her boy was born she had been night after night out on the old wharves, praying for courage to drown herself. After the child came, her feelings changed, and she longed only to escape and to take her son away from the scorn and the sordid life which surrounded them. Gradually she had become hardened; hers was one of those common natures to which custom and pain are opiates, mercifully dulling all sensibilities. To-day the appearance of her betrayer had revivified all the old impressions, and for a moment seemed to transport her to the early days when her anguish was new. The keenest pangs of sorrow stabbed her afresh, and she lived again the bitter moments of her sin and shame. Her instinct was to flee from the man whose presence meant to her only pain. But habit is strong, and presently the fading light reminded the sexton that her work was still unfinished, and that Widow Pettigrove, who was past all earthly tribulation, must have her last bed prepared, whatever the woe of the living woman who worked at it with trembling hands and a sensation as if a demon had clutched her by the throat. Yet work was not unmerciful; it brought some relief, since it served to dilute the thought which rushed dizzyingly to her brain, and by the time her toil was completed she was steadier. When she opened the door to Farnsworth she was not unlike her usual stolid self. She perceived at a glance that he had learned who she was, and she hoped in a blind, aching way, that he had not betrayed his presence to the neighbors, thus to re-awaken all the old stinging flight of bitter words.