accomplished for himself precisely what she had intended to accomplish for him,--she was disconcerted, almost angry. It was in vain that she upbraided herself for her own ingratitude. The life that she had planned for herself was not falling out according to her design. She was cheated; a person who has tried to take in the dark a step that was never there. Let her keep her sense of proportion,--her refuge now, her only refuge,--and she would not even yet be wholly lost. Then she could laugh at the futility of her plans; she could see, as from without, their derision, and their full pitifulness. Her life at Starvecrow had not fallen out according to her design. What of it? A woman spending thirty, forty, wasted years in a forgotten corner of the Downs. What of it? Her memory would not cling about the place after she should be dead, any more than the memory of victims clung about the sacrificial stones. “Here blood was shed,” but that was a collective phrase; all individuality had long since,--almost immediately,--been telescoped into the clemency of perspective. So it would be with her, and she saw herself already as part of that anonymous crowd, whether of the victims of a savage creed, or of the women with the wasted lives,--no sublime and legendary sorrow, except in so far that all sorrow shared in the same great dignity,--women who had lost children or lovers, women who had trailed ill-health about their daily business, women who had borne the long, mute burden of uncertainty, all the grey, silent, muffled women that whispered round her, and that had taken to their graves unchronicled the blunt or the poignant sorrow of their hearts.