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, through their three days’ association with her happy bridals.  Now the room and everything in it seemed to have been created for all time to be the accomplices and ministers of her degradation.  They were well acquainted with her and it; they held foreknowledge of her, as the pier-glass held her dishonoured and dishevelled image.

She thought of her dead father’s house, the ivy-coated Deanery in the south, and of the small white bedroom, a girl’s bedroom that had once known her and would never know her again.  She thought of her father and mother, and was glad that they were dead.  Once she wondered why their death had been God’s will.  Now she saw very clearly why.  But why she herself should have been sent upon this road, of all roads of suffering, was more than Anne could see.

She, whose nature revolted against the despotically human, had schooled herself into submission to the divine.  Her sense of being supremely guided and protected had, before now, enabled her to act with decision in turbulent and uncertain situations of another sort.  Where other people writhed or vacillated, Anne had held on her course, uplifted, unimpassioned, and resigned.  Now she was driven hither and thither, she sank to the very dust and turned in it, she saw no way before her, neither her own way nor God’s way.

Widowhood would not have left her so abject and so helpless.  If her husband’s body had lain dead before her there, she could have stood beside it, and declared herself consoled by the immortal presence of his spirit.  But to attend this deathbed of her belief and of her love, love that had already given itself over, too weak to struggle against dissolution, it was as if she had seen some horrible reversal of the law of death, spirit returning to earth, the incorruptible putting on corruption.