"_They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat._" The other voices surged up, and Janey heard no more. Was it possible there really was a place somewhere where there was no more hunger and thirst, and beating, blinding heat? Or were they only pretty words to comfort where no comfort was? Janey looked out where one soft star hung low in the dusk over the winding river and its poplars. It seemed to her that night as if she had reached the end of her strength. For years, since her father died, she had nursed and sustained her mother, the invalid in the next room, through what endless terrible days and nights, through what scenes of anger and bitterness and despair. Janey had been loyal to one who had never been loyal to her, considerate to one who had ridden rough-shod over her, tender to one who was harsh to her, who had always been harsh. And now her mother, not content with eating up the best years of her daughter's life, had laid her cold hand upon the future, and had urged Janey to promise that after her death she would always keep Harry, her half-witted younger brother, in the same house with her, and protect him from the world on one side and a lunatic asylum on the other. Something desperate had surged up in Janey's heart, and she had refused to give the promise. She could see still her mother's look of impotent anger as she turned her face to the wall, could hear still her hysterical sobbing. She had not dared to remain with her, and Anne the old housemaid was sitting with her till the trained nurse returned from Ipswich, a clever, resourceful woman, who had made herself indispensable to Lady Louisa, and had taken Harry to the dentist--always heretofore a matter difficult of accomplishment. Janey realized with sickening shame this evening that she had unconsciously looked forward to her mother's death as a time when release would come from this intolerable burden which she had endured for the last seven years. Her poor mother would die some day, and a home would be found for Harry, who never missed anyone if he was a day away from them. And she would marry Roger, dear kind Roger, whom she had loved since she was a small child and he was a big boy. That had been her life, in a prison whose one window looked on a green tree: and poor manacled Janey had strained towards it as a plant strains to the light. Something fierce had stirred within her when she saw her mother's hand trying to block the window. That at any rate must not be touched. She could not endure it. She knew that if she married Roger he would never consent that Harry and his attendants should live in the house with them. What man would? She felt sure that her mother had realized that contingency and the certainty of Roger's refusal, and hence her determination to wrest a promise from Janey.