Janet turned.  Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball of fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent.  The delicate lines of the upper bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an instant the cupola of the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above floated in the azure a cloud of pink jeweller’s cotton.  Even as she strove to fix these colours in her mind they vanished, the western sky faded to magenta, to purple-mauve; the corridor of the river darkened, on either side pale lights sparkled from the windows of the mills, while down the deepened blue of the waters came floating iridescent suds from the washing of the wools.  It was given to her to know that which an artist of living memory has called the incommunicable thrill of things....

CHAPTER VIII

The after-effects of this experience of Janet’s were not what ordinarily are called “spiritual,” though we may some day arrive at a saner meaning of the term, include within it the impulses and needs of the entire organism.  It left her with a renewed sense of energy and restlessness, brought her nearer to high discoveries of mysterious joys which a voice out of the past called upon her to forego, a voice somehow identified with her father!  It was faint, ineffectual.  In obeying it, would she not lose all life had to give?  When she came in to supper her father was concerned about her because, instead of walking home with him she had left him without explanation to plunge into the crowd of workers.  Her evident state of excitement had worried him, her caprice was beyond his comprehension.  And how could she explain the motives that led to it?  She was sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions the something within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and more rebellious, more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a nature timorous and less vitalized.

After supper, unable to sit still, she went out, and, filled with the spirit of adventure, hurried toward Faber Street, which was already thronging with people.  It was bright here and gay, the shops glittered, and she wandered from window to window until she found herself staring at a suit of blue cloth hung on a form, beneath which was a card that read, “Marked down to $20.”  And suddenly the suggestion flashed into her mind, why shouldn’t she buy it?  She had the money, she needed a new suit for the winter, the one she possessed was getting shabby...but behind the excuse of necessity was the real reason triumphantly proclaiming itself—­she would look pretty in it, she would be transformed, she would be buying a new character to which she would have to live up.  The old Janet would be cast off with the old raiment; the new suit would announce to herself and to the world a Janet in whom were released all those longings hitherto disguised and suppressed, and now become insupportable!  This was what the