She came back into the street after that, languidly, for the snow lay deeper.  The wind, too, had chilled her more than she knew.  The sleet was frozen upon her mute, white face.  She tried to draw her cloak more closely about her, but her hands refused to hold it.  She looked at them curiously.

“Numb?  How much farther, I wonder?”

It was not long before she came to it.  The house stood up silently in the night.  A single light glimmered far out upon the garden.  Her eye caught it eagerly.  She followed it down, across the orchard, and the little plats where the flowers used to be so bright all summer long.  She had not forgotten them.  She used to go out in the morning and pick them for her mother,—­a whole apronful, purple, and pink, and white, with dewdrops on them.  She was fit to touch them then.  Her mother used to smile when she brought them in.  Her mother!  Nobody ever smiled so since.  Did she know it?  Did she ever wonder what had become of her,—­the little girl who used to kiss her?  Did she ever want to see her?  Sometimes, when she prayed up in the old bedroom, did she remember her daughter who had sinned, or guess that she was tired of it all, and how no one in all the wide world would help her?

She was sleeping there now.  And the father.  She was afraid to see him; he would send her away, if he knew she had come out in the snow to look at the old home.  She wondered if her mother would.

She opened the gate, and went in.  The house was very still.  So was the yard, and the gleam of light that lay golden on the snow.  The numbness of her body began to steal over her brain.  She thought at moments, as she crawled up the path upon her hands and knees,—­for she could no longer walk,—­that she was dreaming some pleasant dream; that the door would open, and her mother come out to meet her.  Attracted like a child by the broad belt of light, she followed it over and through a piling drift.  It led her to the window where the curtain was pushed aside.  She managed to reach the blind, and so stand up a moment, clinging to it, looking in, the glow from the fire sharp on her face.  Then she sank down upon the snow by the door.

Lying so, her face turned up against it, her stiffened lips kissing the very dumb, unanswering wood, a thought came to her.  She remembered the day.  For seven long years she had not thought of it.

A spasm crossed her face, her hands falling clinched.  Who was it of whom it was written, that better were it for that man if he had never been born?  Of Magdalene, more vile than Judas, what should be said?

Yet it was hard, I think, to fall so upon the very threshold,—­so near the quiet, peaceful room, with the warmth, and light, and rest; to stay all night in the storm, with eyes turned to that dead, pitiless sky, without one look into her mother’s face, without one kiss, or gentle touch, or blessing, and die so, looking up!  No one to hold her hand and look into her eyes, and hear her say she was sorry,—­sorry for it all!  That they should find her there in the morning, when her poor, dead face could not see if she were forgiven!