But now that God had turned everything the wrong way and dashed the cup from her lips, and set Himself against her, now in the frenzy that filled her bosom, the rage, the shame, the rebellion, the wild and overwhelming passion, a new furious light had blazed in upon the boiling waves. Ah, God was great, they said. He could restore life when everything pointed to another conclusion. He could work a miracle--but a woman could foil Him. She could kill though He made alive. A moment of time, an insignificant action--and all His healing and restoration would come to nothing. Where did it come from--that awful suggestion? How did it arise? In what way was it shaped? From what source did it come--the horrible thought? It came cutting through her mind and all her agitation in a moment as if it had been flung into her soul from outside. It came like a flash of lightning, like an arrow, like a pointed dart that cut into the flesh. It was not there one moment, and the next it was there, dominating all the commotion, penetrating all the fever and the tumult--a master thought. She drove along the country roads in the corner of her carriage, seeing nothing--through the noonday sunshine and the shade of the trees, through villages and by cornfields where the storing of the harvest had begun--and heard nothing and noticed nothing. At last she pulled the string strongly and told the coachman not to go to Ridding but in the other direction to another little town, to a certain house where she had a call to make. And she made the call; and came out of the house while the coachman was walking his horses up and down, and went into the chief street of the place and made a few purchases, then returned to the house of her friend and got into the brougham and drove home. The coachman had not been aware that she had done anything but come out of the house where she had been calling when he drew up. And he drove home very quickly, having himself come out before his dinner-hour, a thing that did not please him. Letitia was very pale when she came home and tired with her long drive, but she eat her luncheon and did not again shut herself from her family--nor did she avoid speaking of Mar. She went to look at him after she had rested a little. “But I see very little difference,” she said. “He seems to me just as ill as ever, too weak to move, and scarcely opening his eyes.” “But the fever is gone,” they all cried together.