Janet’s nerves were taut.  There had been times during the past weeks when she had been aware of new and vaguely disquieting portents.  Inexperience had led her to belittle them, and the absorbing nature of her work, the excitement due to the strange life of conflict, of new ideas, into which she had so unreservedly flung herself, the resentment that galvanized her—­all these had diverted her from worry.  At night, hers had been the oblivious slumber of the weary....  And then, as a desperate wayfarer, pressing on, feels a heavy drop of rain and glances up to perceive the clouds that have long been gathering, she awoke in the black morning hours, and fear descended upon her.  Suddenly her brain became hideously active as she lay, dry-upped, staring into the darkness, striving to convince herself that it could not be.  But the thing had its advocate, also, to summon ingeniously, in cumulative array, those omens she had ignored:  to cause her to piece together, in this moment of torture, portions of the knowledge of sexual facts that prudery banishes from education, a smattering of which reaches the ears of such young women as Janet in devious, roundabout ways.  Several times, in the month just past, she had had unwonted attacks of dizziness, of faintness, and on one occasion Anna Mower, alarmed, had opened the window of the bibliotheque and thrust her into the cold air.  Now, with a pang of fear she recalled what Anna had said:—­“You’re working too hard—­you hadn’t ought to stay here nights.  If it was some girls I’ve met, I’d know what to think.”

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.