Her head was spinning and she tried to steady herself by clutching at her
thoughts as they swept by, but they slipped away from her like bushes on
the side of a sheer precipice down which she seemed to be falling.
Suddenly her mind grew clear again and she found herself vividly picturing
what would happen when the train reached New York. She shuddered as it
occurred to her that he would be quite cold and that some one might
perceive he had been dead since morning.

She thought hurriedly:--"If they see I am not surprised they will suspect
something. They will ask questions, and if I tell them the truth they
won't believe me--no one would believe me! It will be terrible"--and she
kept repeating to herself:--"I must pretend I don't know. I must pretend I
don't know. When they open the curtains I must go up to him quite
naturally--and then I must scream." ... She had an idea that the scream
would be very hard to do.

Gradually new thoughts crowded upon her, vivid and urgent: she tried to
separate and restrain them, but they beset her clamorously, like her
school-children at the end of a hot day, when she was too tired to silence
them. Her head grew confused, and she felt a sick fear of forgetting her
part, of betraying herself by some unguarded word or look.

"I must pretend I don't know," she went on murmuring. The words had lost
their significance, but she repeated them mechanically, as though they had
been a magic formula, until suddenly she heard herself saying: "I can't
remember, I can't remember!"

Her voice sounded very loud, and she looked about her in terror; but no
one seemed to notice that she had spoken.