The dank lane and vaporous, stagnant landscape were once more dead and silent, and would for a long time remain so, for though potters begin work early, colliers begin work much earlier, living in a world of customs of their own.  At last a thin column of smoke issued magically from a chimney down to the left.  Some woman was about; some woman’s day had opened within that house.  At the thought of that unseen woman in that unknown house Rachel could have cried.  She could not remain at the window.  She was unhappy; but it was not her woe that overcame her, for if she was unhappy, her unhappiness was nevertheless exquisite.  It was the mere realization that men and women lived that rendered her emotions almost insupportable.  She felt her youth.  She thought, “I am only a girl, and yet my life is ruined already.”  And even that thought she hugged amorously as though it were beautiful.  Amid the full disaster and regret, she was glad to be alive.  She could not help exulting in the dreadful moment.

She closed the sash and began to dress, seldom glancing at Louis, who slept and dreamed and muttered.  When she was dressed she looked carefully in the drawer where he deposited certain articles from his pockets, in order to find the bundle of notes left by Julian.  In vain!  Then she searched for his bunch of keys (which ultimately she found in one of his pockets) and unlocked his private drawer.  The bundle of notes lay there.  She removed it, and hid it away in one of her own secret places.  After she had made preparations to get ready some invalid’s food at short notice, she went downstairs.

VII

She went downstairs without any definite purpose—­merely because activity of some kind was absolutely necessary to her.  The clock in the lobby showed dimly a quarter past five.  In the chilly twilit kitchen the green-lined silver-basket lay on the table in front of the window, placed there by a thoughtful and conscientious Mrs. Tams.  On the previous morning Rachel had given very precise orders about the silver (as the workaday electro-plate was called), but owing to the astounding events of the day the orders had not been executed.  Mrs. Tams had evidently determined to carry them out at an early hour.

Rachel opened a cupboard and drew forth the apparatus for cleaning.  She was intensely fatigued, weary, and seemingly spiritless, but she began to clean the silver—­at first with energy and then with serious application.  She stood at the table, cleaning, as she had stood there when Louis came into her kitchen on the night of the robbery; and she thought of his visit and of her lost bliss, and the tears fell from her eyes on the newspaper which protected the whiteness of the scrubbed table.  She would not think of the future; could not.  She went on cleaning, and that silver had never been cleaned as she cleaned it then.  She cleaned it with every attribute of herself, forgetting her fatigue.  The tears dried on her cheek.  The faithful, scrupulous work either drugged or solaced her.  Just as she was finishing, Mrs. Tarns, with her immense bodice unfastened, came downstairs, apronless.  The lobby clock struck six.