She heard it close. She heard his footsteps slowly
descending the stairs. And still she sat there with her face
close-buried in her hands.
CHAPTER IV
You are never to know how deep the iron has entered your soul until
Fate begins to draw it out.
When Traill had left her, Sally's mind had been numbed with misery.
The despair of such loneliness as hers is often a narcotic, that drugs
all power of thought. In the beating of her pulses, when she had first
heard Devenish's footsteps mounting the stairs, she was forced to
the realization that hope was not yet dead in the heart of her. That
undoubtedly was why, despite all Janet's efforts, she had refused
to leave her rooms. The hope that Traill would one day return, that
one evening she would hear his steps on the stairs, his knock on the
door, had needed only such a coincidence as the unexpected visit of
Devenish to stir it into vivid animation. Just so had the Rev. Samuel
Bishop hoped, in the fulfilment of his duties as chaplain, that one
day the rectorship of Cailsham would return to his possession; just
so had he been imbued with faith, the same as hers, when he had
shuddered at his narrow avoidance of sacrilege in the vestry of the
little church at Steynton.
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