en
she had been aware of new and vaguely disquieting portents. Inexperience
had led her to belittle them, and the absorbing nature of her work, the
excitement due to the strange life of conflict, of new ideas, into which
she had so unreservedly flung herself, the resentment that galvanized
her--all these had diverted her from worry. At night, hers had been the
oblivious slumber of the weary.... And then, as a desperate wayfarer,
pressing on, feels a heavy drop of rain and glances up to perceive the
clouds that have long been gathering, she awoke in the black morning
hours, and fear descended upon her. Suddenly her brain became hideously
active as she lay, dry-upped, staring into the darkness, striving to
convince herself that it could not be. But the thing had its advocate,
also, to summon ingeniously, in cumulative array, those omens she had
ignored: to cause her to piece together, in this moment of torture,
portions of the knowledge of sexual facts that prudery banishes from
education, a smattering of which reaches the ears of such young women as
Janet in devious, roundabout ways. Several times, in the month just past,
she had had unwonted attacks of dizziness, of faintness, and on one
occasion Anna Mower, alarmed, had opened the window of the bibliotheque
and thrust her into the cold air. Now, with a pang of fear she recalled
what Anna had said:--"You're working too hard--you hadn't ought to stay
here nights. If it was some girls I've met, I'd know what to think."

Strange that the significance of this sentence had failed to penetrate
her consciousness until now! "If it was some girls I've met, I'd know
what to think!" It had come into her mind abruptly; and always, when she
sought to reassure herself, to declare her terror absurd, it returned to
confront her. Heat waves pulsed through her, she grew intolerably warm,
perspiration started from her pores, and she flung off the blankets. The
rain from the roofs was splashing on the bricks of the passage.... What
would Mr. Insall say, if he knew? and Mrs. Maturin? She could never see
them again. Now there was no one to whom to turn, she was cut off,
utterly, from humanity, an outcast. Like Lise! And only a little while
ago she and Lise had lain in that bed together! Was there not somebody
--God? Other people believed in God, prayed to him. She tried to say, "Oh
God, deliver me from this thing!" but the words seemed a mockery. After
all, it was mechanical, it had either ha