~IX~

And so the thought that she was the one to go remained and grew. It was,
perhaps, first sign of that weakening of the mind which indicated the
singular manner of her going. For it was her mental opposition, the
trees felt, that stood in their way. Once that was overcome,
obliterated, her physical presence did not matter. She would be
harmless.

Having accepted defeat, because she had come to feel that his obsession
was not actually evil, she accepted at the same time the conditions of
an atrocious loneliness. She stood now from her husband farther than
from the moon. They had no visitors. Callers were few and far between,
and less encouraged than before. The empty dark of winter was before
them. Among the neighbors was none in whom, without disloyalty to her
husband, she could confide. Mr. Mortimer, had he been single, might have
helped her in this desert of solitude that preyed upon her mind, but his
wife was there the obstacle; for Mrs. Mortimer wore sandals, believed
that nuts were the complete food of man, and indulged in other
idiosyncrasies that classed her inevitably among the "latter signs"
which Mrs. Bittacy had been taught to dread as dangerous. She stood most
desolately alone.

Solitude, therefore, in which the mind unhindered feeds upon its own
delusions, was the assignable cause of her gradual mental disruption and
collapse.