But that was only her daylight destiny. In the night she staggered down Roothing High Street under stones, or sat in the brown sunshine of the dusty room and watched Peacey stroking his fat thigh and talking of his dear dead mother; or felt his weight thresh down on her like the end of the world; or took into her arms for the first time the limp body of the other child. It did not avail her if she fought her way out of sleep, for then she would continue to re-endure the scene in a frenzy of memory, and either way she knew the agony that the experience had given her with its first prick, coupled with the woe that came of knowing that those things would go on and on, until in the end a little figure in a nightshirt beat the dark with its fists. For a time she found solace in thinking that perhaps she was expiating her involuntary sin in hating her child, and indeed it seemed to her that when she evoked that little figure she felt something in her heart which, if she and the frozen substance of her were triturated a little more by torture, might grow into that proper loving pain which she coveted more than any pleasure. But that process, if it ever had begun, was stopped when Richard was fifteen. It happened, two days after he had come home for the summer holidays, that in the early part of the night she had again been stoned and that she had started up, crying out, "Harry! Harry!" She heard the latch of the door lift, and someone stood on her threshold breathing angrily. Half asleep, she mumbled, "Harry, it can't be you?..." A voice answered haltingly, "No," and a match scratched, and Richard crossed the room and lit the candle by her bedside. She could not see him, for the light was too strong after the darkness, and she could not quite climb out of her dream, but she rocked her head from side to side and muttered, "Go to bed, I'm all right, all right." But he sat down on her bed and took her hand in his, and said sullenly, "You've been calling out for my father. Why are you doing that?" She whimpered, "Nothing. I was only dreaming." But he went on, terrifying her through her veil of sleep. "I know all about it, mother. The other boys told me about it. And Goodtart said something once." His hand tightened on hers. "You used to meet him up at that temple." For a minute he paused, and seemed to be shuddering, and then persisted, "What is it? Why do you cry almost every night? I've heard you ever so often. You've got to tell me what's the matter."