Once or twice, as it haunted her, she got up again to make sure that the door was fast.
The incident, with all it suggested, did but intensify the horror and struggle in which the girl stood, made her mood more strained, more piercingly awake and alert.

Gradually, as the hours passed, as all sounds from without, even that of the wind, died away, and the silence settled round her in ever-widening circles, like deep waters sinking to repose, Marcella felt herself a naked soul, alone on a wide sea, with shapes of pain and agony and revolt.

She looked at the sleeping wife.
"He, too, is probably asleep," she thought, remembering some information which a kindly warder had given her in a few jerky, well-meant sentences, while she was waiting downstairs in the gaol for Minta Hurd.
"Incredible! only so many hours, minutes left--so far as any mortal _knows_--of living, thinking, recollecting, of all that makes us something as against the _nothing_ of death--and a man wastes them in sleep, in that which is only meant for the ease and repair of the daily struggle.

And Minta--her husband is her all--to-morrow she will have no husband; yet she sleeps, and I have helped to make her.

Ah! Nature may well despise and trample on us; there is no reason in us--no dignity! Oh, why are we here--why am _I_ here--to ache like this--to hate good people like Charles Harden and Mary--to refuse all I could give--to madden myself over pain I can never help?
I cannot help it, yet I cannot forsake it; it drives, it clings to me!" She sat over the fire, Willie's hand clasped in hers.