When Sadie spoke like that she meant what she said.
She looked at him steadily for a moment or two, and then put down the mop and turned away.

He durst not follow, and when she entered a room close by, he shrugged with half-bewildered resignation and stumbled off.
Sadie, leaning with labored breath against the rail of her bed, heard him fall down the three or four steps in the middle of the passage and afterwards get up and go on again.

Then she laughed, a strained, hysterical laugh..