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 happened or it hadn't happened. A
life-long experience in an environment where only unpleasant things
occurred, where miracles were unknown, had effaced a fleeting, childhood
belief in miracles. Cause and effect were the rule. And if there were a
God who did interfere, why hadn't he interfered before this thing
happened? Then would have been the logical time. Why hadn't he informed
her that in attempting to escape from the treadmill in which he had
placed her, in seeking happiness, she had been courting destruction? Why
had he destroyed Lise? And if there were a God, would he comfort her now,
convey to her some message of his sympathy and love? No such message,
alas, seemed to come to her through the darkness.

After a while--a seemingly interminable while--the siren shrieked, the
bells jangled loudly in the wet air, another day had come. Could she face
it--even the murky grey light of this that revealed the ashes and litter
of the back yard under the downpour? The act of dressing brought a slight