It was out now—the thing to which Emma had been working ever since she came in, and in fear and defiance of which the dead had been clamouring in her mother’s ear. Here again the incredible had happened which was yet so perfectly natural in the overwrought state of the charwoman’s brain. It was hardly surprising that it should have ceased to link cause with effect, half-paralysed as it was by shock, and bewildered in any case by the events of the day. Those last words, however, clarified it as a landscape is clarified by lightning, while at the same time they extinguished her temporary vitality like a blown candle. There was no sense now in trying to conceal the position from Emma, no use now in trying to hide this last hiatus of a mother’s mind. Slowly her body sank down upon itself, as before, her head dropped, her hands numbed. Her eyes returned to their vacant staring at the floor. “Nay, I’d clean forgotten about t’ house,” she muttered at last, in a voice that, along with the rest of her, had grown terribly old.... Nevertheless, in spite of her collapse, she was calling upon her mind to make one further effort, that weary, outraged mind which, during the last few hours, had been torn so often from one point of view to another. Given her own way, she would have sunk back into black woe, but neither Tibbie nor Emma meant to allow that. One on each side of her they seemed to stand, fighting across her, besieging her dull ear. Tibbie, at least, had a claim that she couldn’t deny, and least of all on her dying day. Emma, too, knew what she was about, to come tempting her at her weakest hour, even though she would go back with her head in her hands and some searching criticism for her pains. For, after all, the decision was already made, and it was sheer waste of time to ask her even to state it. As if it was possible even to think of letting those poor children go to Emma! Even in her grief she could have laughed aloud at the every suggestion. It was true that they still seemed a long way off—the poor little pale mites who were so like Stephen—and so like Emma! It was true, too, that at that moment the tie that bound her was not of love or even of blood; nothing more noble, indeed, than jealous pride of possession. But no matter what the motive that constrained her, there could be no difference in the result. Never in any circumstances could she hand the children over to Emma.