horror at the disagreeableness of what had happened, and a wild desire
to run away to some quiet spot where she would not have to think about
it, where it could not make her unhappy, where her heart would stop
beating so furiously. What had she ever done to have such a horrid
thing happen in her world! She had been as much repelled by Judith's
foaming violence as by any other element of the situation. If she
could only get away! Every sensitive nerve in her, tuned to a graceful
and comely order of life, was rasped to anguish by the ugliness of it
all. Up to the moment Camilla came running to her place--this had been
the dominant impulse in the extreme confusion of Sylvia's mind.

But at the sight of Camilla she felt bursting up through this
confusion of mind, and fiercely attacking her instinct of
self-preservation, a new force, unsuspected, terribly alive--sympathy
with Camilla--Camilla, with her dog-like, timid, loving eyes--Camilla,
who had done nothing to deserve unhappiness except to be
born--Camilla, always uneasy with tragic consciousness of the sword
over her head, and now smiling brightly with tragic unconsciousness
that it was about to fall. Sylvia's heart swelled almost unendurably.
She was feeling, for the first time in her life consciously, the two
natures under her skin, and this, their first open struggle for the
mastery of her, was like a knife in her side.

She sat during the morning session, her eyes on the clock, fearing
miserably the moment of dismissal at noon, when she must take some
action--she who only longed to run away from discord and dwell in
peace. Her mind swung, pendulum-like, from one extreme of feeling to
another. Every time that Camilla smiled at her across the heads of the
other children, sullenly oblivious of their former favorite, Sylvia
turned sick with shame and pity. But when her eyes rested on the hard,