run. And so I sit and eat—slowly, wretchedly, carefully picking out the bones from the amber flesh. My gloves grow damp and stained; and I have none with which to replace them.
After an hour, Mrs Sucksby comes back, to take the empty plate. Another hour, and she brings me coffee. While she is gone I stand, again, at the window, or press my ear to the door. I pace, and sit, and pace again. I pass from fury to maudlin grief, to stupor. But then Richard comes. ''Well, Maud—'' is all he says. I see him, and am filled with a blistering rage. I make a run at him, meaning to strike his face: he wards off the blows and knocks me down, and I lie upon the floor and kick, and kick—
Then they dose me again with medicine and brandy; and a day or two passes in darkness.
When I wake next, it is again unnaturally early. There has appeared in the room a little basket chair, painted gold, with a scarlet cushion on it. I take it to the window and sit with the dressing-gown about me, until Mrs Sucksby yawns and opens her eyes.
''Dear girl, all right?'' she says, as she will say every day, every day; and the idiocy or perversity of the question—when all is so far from being right, as to be so wrong I would almost rather die than endure it—prompts me to grind my teeth or pull at my hair, and gaze at her in loathing. ''Good girl,'' she says then, and, ''Like your chair, do you, dear? I supposed you would.'' She yawns again, and looks about her. ''Got the po?'' she says. I am used in my modesty to taking the chamber-pot behind the horse-hair screen. ''Pass it over, will you, sweetheart? I''m ready to bust.''