But to the is not so easy – to die, that is, the death in which is clenched the seed of a new birth. There are pangs in it of false resurrection, dreadful like the return of Lazarus. As in the death of the body, the will revives time after time and fights. Appalled and faithless the consciousness struggles in the very act of dissolution to be again what it was – to escape its appointed re-entry into the dark womb of extinction.

In these weeks there were mornings when Joanna woke full of a gnawing malaise for Louis.

Then all her memories, fiendish, but clad like angels, would leap to their deathly work. All the old lies would raise their plausible, flat heads, denying the possibility of true renewal. Back, back, back she must go into safety; back to haven: back to the known system which swung securely between the psalm-singing, sunset faith of her fathers and the exquisite underworld of moonlight and falling leaves wherein Louis had his dwelling. Resignation, renunciation, sacrifice! These thrust forward their false, lovely faces; and all their pleadings were for the revival of self-insistence under the mask of immolation.

For even in extremis a choice is left, and the will has its part. Joanna had lost Louis. But there was still a way in which she might refuse to go from him. The very circumstances of their love which had kept them apart for months at a time, the fact that in her dealings with him she had been clear of pettiness, his assurance in the train that he had not so much changed toward her as broken down in himself – all these offered her that way of death in life which is chosen every day that passes by people of her nature.

She could be faithful to Louis. She could refuse to forget and to go on. With loyal obstinate submissiveness she could turn her life into a shrine. She had seen the faces of women who had done this. Was it not the best way when one had so deeply committed oneself? It was not the way of the new birth, but it lay at hand; it showed the sign post of authority; one could travel it and not yield up one’s will.

Or on other days a different brood of devils would crowd in upon her. These had features less like Juley’s than the last, and more like Louis’s. They were full of pleasantry and mocking reasonableness.

Why take so tragically, they asked, what was probably only one of her lover’s bad moods? It was a question of time and good sense, good sense being what she had chiefly lacked. He had behaved badly no doubt. But she might have managed him if she hadn’t been so painfully in earnest. She might still, with time, coolness and skill, win him afresh.