Page:Sologub Sweet Scented Name.djvu/140

 so grievous and humiliating, and there had seemed no way of escape. It was then, in those first dreadful days after she knew he was married to another, in those sweet places made dear to her by the memory of his kisses, that she had first felt the movements of her child—and linked with the first thoughts of a new life had come the forebodings of death. No child must ever be born to her!

No one at home had ever known—she had thought out some pretext for getting away. Somehow or other, with great difficulty, she had got enough money together and had managed everything—she never wished to remember how—and had returned to her home, weak and ill, with pallid face and tired body, yet with heroic strength of spirit to conceal her pain and terror.

Memory often tried to remind her of all that had taken place, but Nadezhda Alexevna refused to acknowledge its power. When sometimes in a flash she recalled everything, she would shudder with horror and repulsion and resolutely turn her mind away at once from the picture.

But in her heart there was one memory which she treasured; she had a child, though it had never come to birth, and she