The day was full of mist and sun. Along the edges of the woods the white vapours loitered, half concealing the forms of the grazing kine; and the light shadows floated on the grass, long and prolonged, even as the memories that were now filling the mind of this sentimental workwoman. It seemed to her that she was now on the threshold of a new life--the life of which she had so long dreamed. Her lover was near her, but in a railway carriage filled with smoke and with various men and women; and it seemed to her that they should be walking in sunny meadows by hedgerows. The birds were singing in the shaws; but in her imagination the clicking of needles and the rustling of silk mingled with the songs of the birds, and forgetting the landscape, with a sigh she fell to thinking of what they would be saying of her at home. She knew Mrs. Ede would have the whole town searched, and when it was no longer possible to entertain a doubt, she would say that Kate's name must never again be mentioned in her presence. A letter! there was much to say: but none would understand. The old woman who had once loved her so dearly would for ever hate and detest her. And Ralph? Kate did not care quite so much what he thought of her; she fancied him swearing and cursing, and sending the police after her; and then he appeared to her as a sullen, morose figure moving about the shop, growling occasionally at his mother, and muttering from time to time that he was devilish glad that his wife had gone away. She would have wished him to regret her; and when she remembered the little girls, she felt the tears rise to her eyes. What explanation would be given to them? Would they learn to hate her? She thought not; but still, they would have to give up coming to the shop--there was no one now to teach them sewing. Her absence would change everything. Mrs. Ede would never be able to get on with Hender, and even if she did, neither of them knew enough of dressmaking to keep the business going, and she asked herself sorrowfully: 'What will become of them?' They would not be able to live upon what they sold in the shop--that was a mere nothing. Poor Ralph's dreams of plate-glass and lamps! Where were they now? Mrs. Ede's thirty pounds a year would barely pay the rent. A vision of destruction and brokers passed before her mind, and she realized for the first time the immense importance of the step she had taken. Not only was her own future hidden, but the future of those she had left behind. The tedium of her life in Hanley was forgotten, and she remembered only the quiet, certain life she might have led, in and out from the shop to the front kitchen, and up to her workroom--the life that she had been born into. Now she had nothing but this man's love. If she were to lose it!