CHAPTER XV.
The years that followed--till, like some shipwrecked swimmer to whom returning light reveals the land, she felt new life and hopes come back to her--always remained in her memory vague, confused; a jumble of events, thoughts, feelings, without sequence or connection.
She had gone down to Liverpool, intending to persuade her father to leave the control of the works to Arthur, and to come and live with her in London; but had left without broaching the subject.

There were nights when she would trapse the streets till she would almost fall exhausted, rather than face the solitude awaiting her in her own rooms.

But so also there were moods when, like some stricken animal, her instinct was to shun all living things.

At such times his presence, for all his loving patience, would have been as a knife in her wound.

Besides, he would always be there, when escape from herself for a while became an absolute necessity.