ith these two
presiding over it, took on something of the aspect of a sanctuary....

Insall, in some odd manner, and through the medium of that frivolous
lady, had managed to reenforce certain doubts that had been stirring in
Janet--doubts of Rolfe, of the verity of the doctrine which with such
abandon she had embraced. It was Insall who, though remaining silent,
just by being there seemed to have suggested her manner of dealing with
Mrs. Brocklehurst. It had, indeed, been his manner of dealing with Mrs.
Brocklehurst. Janet had somehow been using his words, his method, and
thus for the first time had been compelled to look objectively on what
she had deemed a part of herself. We never know what we are, he had said,
until we become something else! He had forced her to use an argument that
failed to harmonize, somehow, with Rolfe's poetical apologetics. Stripped
of the glamour of these, was not Rolfe's doctrine just one of taking,
taking? And when the workers were in possession of all, would not they be
as badly off as Mrs. Brocklehurst or Ditmar? Rolfe, despite the inspiring
intellectual creed he professed, lacked the poise and unity that go with
happiness. He wanted things, for himself: whereas she beheld in Insall
one who seemed emancipated from possessions, whose life was so organized
as to make them secondary affairs. And she began to wonder what Insall
would think of Ditmar.

These sudden flashes of tenderness for Ditmar startled and angered her.
She had experienced them before, and always had failed to account for
their intrusion into a hatred she cherished. Often, at her desk in the
bibliotheque, she had surprised herself speculating upon what Ditmar
might be doing at that moment; and it seemed curious, living in the same
city with him, that she had not caught a glimpse of him during the
strike. More than once, moved by a perverse impulse, she had ventured of
an evening down West Street toward the guard of soldiers in the hope of
catching sight of him. He had possessed her, and the memory of the wild
joy of that possession, of that surrender to great strength, refused to
perish. Why, at such moments, should she glory in a strength that had
destroyed her and why, when she heard him cursed as the man who stood,
more than any other, in the way of the strikers victory, should she
paradoxically and fiercely rejoice? why should she feel pride when she
was told of the fearlessness with which he went about the streets, an