Brown on Resolution by C.S. Forester — Read

So years followed years, and each succeeding year dragged more heavily and more painfully than did the one before. To Agatha's tortured conscience it seemed as if retribution was being exacted from her for her vile sin. To her it was natural that a lifetime of pain and squalor should be the consequence of a five days' madness. Fine sewing sank steadily in value; private customers fell away -- the economic causes of a falling birthrate and marriage-rate broke her on their wheel. There was not so much demand nowadays for baby clothes or wedding dresses, and simplicity was creeping into fashion even in such garments as were ordered of her. The shops which had first bought her output had grown larger and had amalgamated, and obscurely she was squeezed out from supplying them. Competition was growing fiercer, and money was scarcer in the 1900's than it had been in the 1890's. Agatha's earnings grew smaller, and there were often weeks when she had to draw upon her hoarded capital to meet Mrs. Rodgers's weekly bill. She was finding less work and smaller pay for what she did.

Nor was this all. Physical pain, that last exaction by a relentless deity in payment for her sin, had come into her life. Sometimes it was slight, and Agatha could seemingly set it aside unnoticed. But at the other times it was sharper, more intense, drastic. It was not a fair pain. It did not come upon her when she was expecting it and braced against it. When she stood up from her chair and held herself ready for it, it did not come, but the instant she relaxed to go on with what she was doing it fell upon her and rent her with agony. It was a fierce, horrible pain.