the procession of her dedicated thoughts, virgins all, veiled even before
their God.

Now she precipitated herself with clutching hands thrown out before her;
with hot eyes that drank the tears of their own passion; with the shamed
back and panting mouth of a Magdalen; with memories that scattered the
veiled procession of the Prayers. They fled before her, the Prayers, in a
gleaming tumult, a rout of heavenly wings that obscured her heaven. When
they had vanished a sudden vagueness came upon her.

And then it seemed that the storm that had gone over her had rolled her
mind out before her, like a sheet of white-hot iron. There was a record
on it, newly traced, of things that passion makes indiscernible under its
consuming and aspiring flame. Now, at the falling of the flame, the faint
characters flashed into sight upon the blank, running in waves, as when
hot iron changes from white to sullen red. Anne felt that her union with
Majendie had made her one with that other woman, that she shared her
memory and her shame. For Majendie's sake she loathed her womanhood that
was yesterday as sacred to her as her soul. Through him she had conceived
a thing hitherto unknown to her, a passionate consciousness and hatred of
her body. She hated the hands that had held him, the feet that had gone
with him, the lips that had touched him, the eyes that had looked at him
to love him. Him she detested, not so much on his own account, as because
he had made her detestable to herself.

Her eyes wandered round the room. Its alien aspect was becoming
transformed for her, like a scene on a tragic stage. The light had
established itself in the windows and pier-glasses. The wall-paper was
flushing in its own pink dawn. And the roses bloomed again on the grey
ground of the bed-curtains. These things had become familiar, even dear,