When, Heaven knows, I would have died to have brought back her good name!’

Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and grief was terrible.

‘To have died, would not have been much — what can I say? — -I would have lived!’ she cried. ‘I would have lived to be old, in the wretched streets — and to wander about, avoided, in the dark — and to see the day break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used to shine into my room, and wake me once — I would have done even that, to save her!’

Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them up, as if she would have ground them.

She writhed into some new posture constantly: