ad been times during the past weeks
when 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 al