“And it’s a shock he wants—a shock——He wants tearing up—by the roots——” Then her voice rose. “Ah, but I can’t hurt him,” she cried defiantly. “I can’t. You can’t make me.” The eyes in the glass were alive with passion. “If it isn’t you it’ll be some one else—some beast of a woman who won’t care how she hurts him. It’s got to be you.” At that she sprang up from the table to escape the intolerable domination. But everywhere there were looking-glasses. She turned panic-stricken from herself a yard away from her in the long wardrobe, to the mantelpiece reflecting Dresden figures and herself, and, caught from the wardrobe, herself again, and again, and yet again, in an unending reduplication of gay dressing-gown and ashy face. For she might turn where she would, she might crush out the candle-flames, and, flung down upon her bed, cover her eyes with her hair and her desperate, scorched hands; but she could not escape from herself, from the inquisition of her own awakened soul. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXVIII In the half light of the third hour she rose, freshened her eyes with cold water and crept out of the creaky house into the grey midsummer world. The birds were half awake, chirruping, as it seemed in that stillness, loud and shrill, tuning up for the concert that was to come; but the trees had still their motionless carved night-look, and the hedges and fields were as fast as if the thick film of dew spread over them were a visible spell. In spite of the burning season the air was cold, with the dank cold of the smallest hours, when virtue goes out of beast and man alike, in sleep that is half at one with its exemplar death. Laura, fever-driven, trailing through the dust-white grass that edged the high-road, wrenching as she went, with a sort of aimless cruelty, at the dripping tansy heads and trails of dewberries, felt the flying water-drops soak through her thin sleeves and spray up on to her face, and shivered and burned again, and had no good of them. Yet the riot within her was dying out: her mood was as desolate as the hour. She had ceased fighting. She acknowledged her duty: was set (and therein lay her fever) upon doing it. She had only come out because in the open she could breathe more easily, think more clearly, and because ... because ... (here, if she had been speaking aloud, would have come the high note) because she could not bear her bedroom any longer. But it was not because she doubted, was questioning her duty. That was settled. That—she would not think of it—but _that_ she had settled, with herself, last night. But that inexorable self had left to her own decision (because she knew him so well—so well) how best to hurt Justin—to hurt him.