Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/253

 wires above her head buzzed in their melancholy strain

And again she passed through a village.

She no longer looked about her. Her fatigue and faintness were increasing. In her head, her back, her limbs, she felt a leaden weight. Her legs bent unconsciously forward. She heard a heavy, hollow sound in her head, and the blood beating londly in her temples. The circle of her thoughts was becoming narrower, and hovered about one constant point: there, at the bridge, all would be over

And she walked and walked, until she entered a long, seemingly endless avenue of old chestnut trees. They were in bloom when she had seen them first. Now it was all past, The green burrs stood out in cone-shaped clusters.

The black, cracked trunks of the trees dragged by her.

As though in a dream Lucy remembered how the old lady, looking there into the dis-