otentialities in the depths of her ill-compounded nature: the
day she ceased to be true to herself there would be a tragedy in that
dark house on the hill. Sometimes she wondered toward what end she was
persevering, striving to perfect the better part of her. A quarter of a
century or more of meaningless earthly existence? A controvertible
hereafter? But she ceased to analyse, knowing that it could lead nowhere
until the human mind ceased to be human.

And one day, in the end of the summer, she lost her grip on herself.

For three days the trade-winds had raged; she had not been able to leave
the house. Twice she had set forth, desperate with the nervous monotony
of her hours, and been driven back by the blinding dust. It was on the
third day that she happened to catch sight of herself in the glass. She
saw her face plainer than ever, but her attention passed suddenly to her
shoulders and rested there. They were bent. Her carriage was dejected,
apathetic. The sluggish tide mounted slowly to her face as she realised
that this physical manner must have fallen upon her gradually, and been
worn for some time; and its significance. She made an effort to reassume
her old erect haughty poise, which had been partly the manifest of
inherent pride, partly of half-acknowledged defiance of the
beauty-worship of the world. Her shoulders sank before the spine had
risen to its perpendicular. What did it matter? Again she experienced
that disintegration of will which once had left her at the mercy of that
instinct for destruction which is one of the essential particles of the
ego.

Her brain was almost torpid. The want of exhilarating exercise, the long
dearth of companionship, the terrible monotony of her life, the restless
nights, the dank gloomy atmosphere in which she had her perpetual being,
were, she told herself dully, doing their work. And she did not care.
But if her brain was sodden, her nerves felt as if on the verge of
explosion. She noticed that her hands were not steady, and sat for
hours, wondering what was coming upon her. She cared less and less.

Ah Kee tapped at her door. She replied that she did not want any dinner,
loathing the unvarying bill-of-fare.

The hours dragged on, and darkness came; but she did not light the gas,
whose jet was but a feeble point in these times, hardly worth the waste
of a match. She strained her ears, fancied she heard whisperings in the
hall below. If San Francisco's skeletons really