The fact is I no
longer possessed motive or strength to resist. Even your unexpected
appearance at the door, Mrs. Daniels, offered no prospect of hope.
Arouse the house? what would that do? only reveal my cherished secret
and perhaps jeopardize the life of my husband. Besides, they were my
own near kin, remember, and so had some little claim upon my
consideration, at least to the point of my not personally betraying
them unless they menaced immediate and actual harm. The escape by the
window which would have been a difficult task for most women to
perform, was easy enough for me. I was brought up to wild ways you
know, and the descent of a ladder forty feet long was a comparatively
trivial thing for me to accomplish. It was the tearing away from a
life of silent peace, the reentrance of my soul into an atmosphere of
sin and deadly plotting, that was the hard thing, the difficult
dreadful thing which hung weights to my feet, and made me well nigh
mad. And it was this which at the sight of a policeman in the street
led me to make an effort to escape. But it was not successful. Though
I was fortunate enough to free myself from the grasp of my father and
brother, I reached the gate on ----- street only to encounter the eyes
of him whose displeasure I most feared, looking sternly upon me from
the other side.
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