She went down to the hall, then noiselessly along the further passage and bare stone stairs to the little business room. All was dark and silent there, the moonlight coming in through the chinks of the closed shutters. Mrs. Blencarrow stood on the threshold a moment as if she had expected to find someone there, then went in and sat down a few minutes in the dark. Her movements and her sudden pauses were alike full of the carelessness of distracted action. In the solitude and midnight darkness and silence, what could her troubled thoughts be meditating? Suddenly she moved again unseen, and came out to the door by which tenants and other applicants came for business or charity. She turned the key softly, and, opening it, stood upon the threshold. The opening from the darkness into the white world unseen was like a chill and startling transformation; the white light streamed in, opening a narrow pathway in the darkness, in the midst of which she stood, a ghost indeed--enough to have curdled the blood of any spectator. She stood for another moment between the white world without and the blackness of night and sleep within. To steal away and be lost for ever in that white still distance; to disappear and let the billows of light and space and silence swallow her up, and be seen no more. Ah! but that was not possible. The only thing possible to mortal power was a weary plodding along a weary road, that led not to vague distances, but to some village or town well known, where the fugitive would be discovered by the daylight, by wondering wayfarers, by life which no one can escape. Even should death overtake her, and the welcome chill extinguish existence, yet still there would be found somewhere, like a fallen image, her empty shell, her mortal garment lying in the way of the first passenger. No; oh no; rather still the struggle, the contradictions, the despair---- And how could she ask God to help her?--that one appeal which is instinctive: for there was nothing she could do that would not be full of lies or of treachery, a shirking of one duty or another, the abandonment of justice, truth, and love. She turned from the world outside and closed the door; then returned again up the long stairs, and crossed once more the broad belt of moonlight from the window in the staircase. It was like resigning all hope of outside help, turning back to the struggle that had to be fought out inch by inch on the well-known and common ground. She was chilled to the heart with the icy air of the night, and threw herself down on the hearthrug before the fire, with a forlorn longing for warmth, which is the last physical craving of all wounded and suffering things; and then she fell into a deep but broken sleep, from which she fortunately picked herself up before daylight, so as to prevent any revelation of her agitated state to the maid, who naturally suspected much, but knew, thanks to Mrs. Blencarrow’s miraculous self-command, scarcely anything at all.