Jeannot, with Father Francis, prayed before the shrine of the Seven Sorrows.

Mere Krebs slumbered in her rush-bottomed chair; she was old and worked hard.

The starling was awake.
Bebee rose in her bed, and looked around, as she had done when she had asked for the moss-rosebud.
A sense of unutterable universal pain ached over all her body.
She did not see her little home, its four white walls, its lattice shining in the moon, its wooden bowls and plates, its oaken shelf and presses, its plain familiar things that once had been so dear,--she did not see them; she only saw the brown woman with her arm about his throat.
She sat up in her bed and slipped her feet on to the floor; the pretty little rosy feet that he had used to want to clothe in silken stockings.
Poor little feet! she felt a curious compassion for them; they had served her so well, and they were so tired.
She sat up a moment with that curious dull agony, aching everywhere in body and in brain.

She kissed the rosebud once more and laid it gently down in the wooden shoe.

She did not see anything that was around her.
She felt a great dulness that closed in on her, a great weight that was like iron on her head.
She thought she was in the strange, noisy, cruel city, with' the river close to her, and all her dead dreams drifting down it like murdered children, whilst that woman kissed him.
She slipped her feet on to the floor, and rose and stood upright.