Nearly an hour passed, and then he returned an answer:

I do not wish to pain you. How well you KNOW I don't! Give me

a little time. I am disposed to agree to your last request.

One line from her:

Thank you from my heart, Richard. I do not deserve your

kindness.

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All day Phillotson bent a dazed regard upon her through the glazed

partition; and he felt as lonely as when he had not known her.

But he was as good as his word, and consented to her living apart

in the house. At first, when they met at meals, she had seemed

more composed under the new arrangement; but the irksomeness of

their position worked on her temperament, and the fibres of her

nature seemed strained like harp-strings. She talked vaguely and

indiscriminately to prevent his talking pertinently.

IV

Phillotson was sitting up late, as was often his custom, trying to

get together the materials for his long-neglected hobby of Roman

antiquities. For the first time since reviving the subject he felt a

return of his old interest in it. He forgot time and place, and when

he remembered himself and ascended to rest it was nearly two o'clock.

His preoccupation was such that, though he now slept on the other

side of the house, he mechanically went to the room that he and his

wife had occupied when he first became a tenant of Old-Grove Place,

which since his differences with Sue had been hers exclusively.

He entered, and unconsciously began to undress.

There was a cry from the bed, and a quick movement. Before the

schoolmaster had realized where he was he perceived Sue starting up

half-awake, staring wildly, and springing out upon the floor on the

side away from him, which was towards the window. This was somewhat

hidden by the canopy of the bedstead, and in a moment he heard her

flinging up the sash. Before he had thought that she meant to do

more than get air she had mounted upon the sill and leapt out. She

disappeared in the darkness, and he heard her fall below.

Phillotson, horrified, ran downstairs, striking himself sharply

against the newel in his haste. Opening the heavy door he ascended

the two or three steps to the level of the ground, and there on the

gravel before him lay a white heap. Phillotson seized it in his

arms, and bringing Sue into the hall seated her on a chair, where he

gazed at her by the flapping light of the candle which he had set

down in the draught on the bottom stair.




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