lucy felt dreadfully guilty all through that wretched evening. if she had assisted in a murder she couldn't have felt worse.

she had no appetite for dinner, and when she went back to her room, what was still more unusual, she had no appetite for her work. a newnham girl is a gourmand where work is concerned; she may leave her meals untasted, but that terrible craving within creates an appetite that is akin to ravenous where work is concerned. when that craving ceases she goes down—or breaks down.

it had ceased quite suddenly with lucy; she hated the very thought of work; she loathed with an unutterable loathing the sight of those mathe[pg 103]matical books she had brought back from st. benedict's. she shrank from them with a dreadful sense of faintness and sickness when she attempted to open them. they smelt of blood, or else she fancied they did.

the air was full of fancies. it was a stormy night, and the wind was wailing round her corner of the building, and every now and then a sharp blast of driving rain would strike upon her window. she heard the rain distinctly dropping down the pane like tears, and she fancied—oh, it was a dreadful fancy!—that it was drops of blood.

she bore it in that lonely room as long as she could, and then she got up and went out into the passage. the lights were out, and the place was quite still; everybody had gone to bed. dark and deserted as the corridor was, it was not so lonely as her own room. there were girls sleeping behind every one of those closed doors. she heard them—for the ventilators of most were open—breathing audibly, and some were moaning in their sleep.

lucy walked up and down the long corridor; her[pg 104] feet were bare, and she had thrown nothing over her shoulders. cousin mary would have scolded her dreadfully if she had seen her, with her white garments trailing on the stone floor.

she never thought of the draughts or the cold stones; she only thought of getting away from that everlasting drip, drip of the window-pane, that brought the scene of the afternoon so vividly before her. she was nervous and overwrought, and she was burdened with a secret she ought never to have bound herself to keep.

wild horses shouldn't tear it from her, she told herself, as she paced up and down that draughty passage. whatever happened, she would be true to her word. it would be hard if a girl couldn't be trusted as well as a man. what was the use of coming to newnham if gossip and emptiness—the habits of the slave—still had dominion over her?

it was all very fine and high-sounding; but she would have given the world to have told somebody, to have eased her overburdened mind and[pg 105] poured out the dreadful story on some soft feminine, sympathetic bosom.

and then, while she was telling herself all these fine things, and repeating lord tennyson's nice verses about that open fountain that was to wash away all those silly human things and make woman perfect—quite perfect—a strange thing happened.

she heard the voice of the man praying. he was praying now; she heard him quite distinctly, but she could not catch the words. she was quite sure it was the voice; it had sunk down so deep into her ears that she could never forget it. lucy paused in the darkness and listened. the voice came from a room at the door of which she was standing. she had no idea, in the darkness, whose room it was; she was only sure—quite sure—of the voice.

an overpowering desire to see the speaker—perhaps to get her release—seized her, and she opened the door of the room.

there was no man there praying; there was only a girl sitting reading by the light of a shaded lamp,[pg 106] and she was reading aloud. it was pamela gwatkin, and she was reading a greek play.

lucy went a few paces into the room and stood there as if spellbound, listening to the girlish voice, in low solemn accents, mouthing the rhythmic greek. she didn't read it as if it were wordsworth, or cowper, or keats, or even tennyson; she mouthed it; and the noble words, falling in noble cadence, brought back the voice of the man wrestling with god for his friend.

pamela heard the door open, and she looked up. she didn't divide the shuddering night with a shrill-edged shriek, and bring all newnham about her, as she might have done at the sight of the white-robed figure standing in the doorway. she thought it was a girl walking in her sleep, and she got up softly and went towards her.

for a moment, as she came forward, she saw the figure swaying in the doorway, and as she came nearer lucy tottered forward with her arms out-stretched like one walking in a dream, and fell upon her bosom—literally fell, with her clinging[pg 107] arms around her, and her head pillowed on pamela's bosom.

'oh, it is eric gwatkin!' she sobbed, 'it is eric gwatkin!'

pamela got her over to the couch—it was a bed now, not a couch; the serge rug had been removed, and a snowy coverlet was in its place, and a real pillow, not a sham roundabout bolster covered with an embroidered dragon.

pamela gwatkin laid the girl down on her own bed and covered her up. she was shaking dreadfully, and her hands and feet were like ice, and she was sobbing hysterically.

when pamela had covered her up, she shut the door of the room; it was no good making a scene and arousing everybody, because a girl—a little weak-minded fresher—had broken down under the strain and got hysterical. all girls get hysterical at times, only the stronger ones lock the door and wrestle with the enemy in secret.

'oh, eric gwatkin!' moaned the girl on the bed. 'i can't keep it any longer; i must tell!'

[pg 108]

'what have you got to do with eric gwatkin?' pamela asked severely. 'i am sure he is nothing to you; he is never likely to be anything to anybody.'

'oh yes, he is! he is everything to—to wyatt edgell. he has saved his life. oh, you don't know what he is to him!'

'saved his life? what are you talking about? what has wyatt edgell got to do with you, and with eric?'

'he sewed it up—the wound—the dreadful gaping wound!'

lucy covered her eyes with her hands to shut out the dreadful sight, and she was trembling so dreadfully that the bed shook with her. clearly the girl was in a fever, and her mind was wandering. the name of wyatt edgell was familiar to pamela; it was familiar to everybody in cambridge. he was the coming senior wrangler. what could eric have to do with him—poor eric, who was grinding for his 'special'?

'what wound?' said pamela impatiently; 'and who sewed it up?'

[pg 109]

'eric sewed it up, and i helped him. i drew the edges together, while he put the needle in the quivering flesh. oh, it was horrible!'

lucy sank back on the couch, and her lips grew pale, and her cheeks gray, and pamela thought she was going to faint. she hadn't got anything but eau-de-cologne to give her—not a nip of brandy for the world; not even a pocket flask is allowed at newnham. she went to the water-jug and poured out some water in a basin, and dabbed it over the girl's face and hands, and made her own bed streaming. perhaps there was something in the girl's story, after all! she couldn't have dreamed these hideous details.

'where was the wound? how had he hurt himself?' she asked presently.

'he had cut his throat.'

pamela let the basin of water she was holding fall on the floor. she didn't scream as any less well-regulated mind would have done, but she let the basin slip out of her hands, and the water made a dreadful mess on the floor.

[pg 110]

'cut his throat?' she repeated faintly—she was nearly as white as lucy—'and eric——'

'eric sewed it up.'

'is—is he dead?'

she asked the question hoarsely, in a voice lucy couldn't have recognised for pamela's, but she was past noticing voices.

'no—o; eric has asked god to give him back his life, that he may begin it afresh.'

'what use is that?' said pamela bitterly.

'i am sure god heard him—we were praying for him when the nurse came in. he was asking that the nurse might be sent quickly, and she came while the words were on his lips.'

'of course the nurse would be sent; you can get a nurse at any moment from addenbroke's without praying for one.'

'oh, you don't understand!' lucy moaned; 'you don't know the worst. it had to be done secretly: no one must know. it would ruin him for life if it were known.'

'you don't mean that they haven't told anyone?[pg 111] that they are trying to hush it up, and not let the tutors know?'

lucy moaned.

'oh, what folly is this! i am sure eric is at the bottom of it.'

'yes; it was eric made me promise i wouldn't tell, and i have told you,' lucy murmured helplessly.

'of course you have told me. having told me so much, you must tell me all—you must keep nothing back.'

and so lucy sat up in the bed with her arms round pamela—she couldn't have told her without having something to cling to—and told her her wretched little story, and how she had pledged herself to keep this young man's secret.

'what do you think i ought to do?' she asked weakly, when the recital was finished.

'do?' said pamela, but she didn't answer the girl's question. she disengaged herself from her clinging arms, and she paced up and down the room, her feet dabbling in the water on the floor.[pg 112] she stopped presently in her walk, her chin up, and her face set with the light of a high resolve upon it towards the light that was breaking in at the east window; she might have been reciting that greek play. 'do?' she repeated, and her face was hard and cold and tired. the old weary look had come back to it—no wonder; it was three o'clock in the morning. 'do? why, go to bed, of course!'

she refused to say another word about lucy's secret. she helped her back to her room, and put her to bed, and tucked her in, and drew back the curtains, that the light of the new day might drive away the ghosts of the night.

pamela did all this without speaking a word; but when she got to the door of lucy's room she stopped and looked back. she could see from the tremulous motion of the clothes that the girl was weeping, and she went over to the bed and put her cool lips to lucy's forehead.

'good-night, dear!' she said softly. 'i think you have behaved beautifully!'