He was thinking of the small profanities of this death rather than of the death itself. He hadn’t realized that yet, he was probing his way through the attendant circumstances to the depths of his tragedy. He knew that he would never lie beneath the stars again with Annie while the breeze soughed through the heather and she crooned old songs of the roads in his ear: he knew, but he did not believe it yet. She had been so utterly protective of him. If she took down her hair, and held it from her, and he crept beneath its curious warmth, what had mattered then? He had loved her and by the grace of Phoebe--though he was not thinking of Phoebe now--they had been given leave to love and to enjoy each other in the hours which were not the factory’s. The engine, thumped horribly on his ear and a gust of passionate hatred struggled to make itself articulate. “You fiend!” he cried. “Curse you, curse you!” When an overseer came to tell him that a hand-cart was at the gates to take Annie’s body and the baby home, and that Phoebe might go with him, he was lying, dazed, on the floor and mechanically did what he was told to do. He had no volition in him, and Mr. Barraclough, professional observer, noting both his hysteria and his stupor decided that he had found his man at last. Providence had ordained that Annie should die to make an instrument for Richard Needham’s emissary. In the days of her youth, Phoebe had her follies as she had her prettiness; now, schooled by adversity, an old woman of forty, she was without illusions as she was without comeliness; she had nothing but her son, and, hidden like a miser’s gold, her hatred of the Hepplestalls, of Reuben who betrayed her, of Dorothy whom he married, of his sons who stood where her son should have stood. For two seconds she was weakened now, for two seconds: as she folded Annie’s baby in her shawl and held him closely to her she had the thought that she must go to Reuben with a plea for help, then put that thought away. “Don’t worry your head about the childer, lad,” she said, “I’ll manage.” She would work in the factory, she would order their cottage, she would rear the babies, she would pay some older woman who was past more active work a small sum (but the accepted rate) to look after the babies while she was in the factory. She would take this burden off his shoulders as she had taken the burden of housework off Annie’s. She had permitted John and Annie to enjoy the luxury of love and now she was permitting John the luxury of woe. She said that she would “manage,” he knew the enormous implications of the word, but knew, because she said it, that she would keep her promise. There was no limit to his faith in Phoebe and he touched her shoulder gently, undemonstratively, saying in that simple gesture all his unspeakable gratitude, accepting what she gave not because he underrated it, not because he did not understand, but because it was the only thing to do.