Had
Stephen told her he loved her, but that they must suppress their
passion, that she must wait, she would have obeyed him, and waited
months, years, gone down to her grave waiting, in patient fidelity
to him. Her qualities of control were as fine as his, and her
devotion to a man who loved her would have been limitless, but,
acting according to his views, Stephen had taken some trouble to
convince her he was not the man, and she was convinced.
And being convinced, the vision of her life without him seemed just
then a dismal waste, impossible to face.
In most of the actions of the human being, the physical state of
the person at the time is the principal factor, and May's whole
physical frame, violently over-strained, craved for rest--rest that
the excited brain could not give. Rest was the urgent demand
pressed by the breaking nervous system, and from these two
thoughts--rest, oblivion--grew the dangerous thought of Death.
"Sleep and forget! but I can't," she thought, "and if I do, there
is the horrible awakening;" and again her fatigue suggested all the
past sleepless nights, and the craving of the body urged the brain
to find better means of satisfying it, in the same way as the
appetite for food forces the brain to devise methods for procuring
it.
She walked on in a straight line from Stephen's house, and the road
happened to pass a post-office.
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