her
stare was apelike. She had felt, then, the fullest significance of
horror. In the morning she had ceased to be the epileptic shape, but the
risk of re-transformation had hovered near her, and the intimidation of
it was such that she had wept, aghast and broken as much by the future
as by the past. She had been discovered weeping....

Later, the phrase 'nervous breakdown' had lodged in her confused memory.
The doctor had been very matter-of-fact, logical, and soothing.
Overwork, strain, loss of sleep, the journey, anxiety, lack of food, the
supreme shock, the obstinate refusal of youth to succumb, and then the
sudden sight of the epileptic (with whom the doctor was acquainted):
thus had run the medical reasoning, after a discreet but thorough
cross-examination of her; and it had seemed so plausible and so
convincing that the doctor's pride in it was plain on his optimistic
face as he gave the command: "Absolute repose." But to Hilda the
reasoning and the resultant phrase, 'nervous breakdown,' had meant
nothing at all. Words! Empty words! She knew, profoundly and fatally,
the evil principle which had conquered her so completely that she had no
power left with which to fight it. This evil principle was Sin; it was
not the force of sins, however multifarious; it was Sin itself. She was
the Sinner, convicted and self-convicted. One of the last intelligent
victims of a malady which has now almost passed away from the civilized
earth, she existed in the chill and stricken desolation of incommutable
doom.

III

She had sinned against her mother, and she could not make amends. The
mere thought of her mother, so vivacious, cheerful, life-loving,
even-tempered, charitable, disorderly, incompetent, foolish, and yet
shrewd, caused pain of such intensity that it ceased to be pain. She
ought to have seen her mother before she died; she might have seen her,
had she done what was obviously her duty. It was inconceivable to her,
now, that she should have hesitated to fly instantly to London on
receipt of the telegram. But she had hesitated, and her mother had
expired without having sight of her. All exculpatory arguments were
futile against the fact itself. In vain she blamed the wording of the
telegram! In vain she tried to reason that chance, and not herself, was
the evil-doer! In vain she invoked the aid of simple common sense
against sentimental fancy! In vain she went over the events of the
afternoon preceding the death, i