She tried to recall what had happened shortly before dawn but it was no wonder that her memory served her ill and refused to bring back distinctly the words she had spoken.  Her whole being was unsettled and shaken, so that she found it hard to recognise herself.  The stormy hours through which she had lived since yesterday had left their trace; the lack of rest, instead of producing physical exhaustion, had brought about an excessive mental weariness, and it was not easy for her now to find all the connecting links between her actions.  Then, above all else, there was the great revulsion that had swept over her after her last and greatest plan of evil had failed, causing in her such a change as could hardly have seemed natural or even possible to a calm person watching her inmost thoughts.

And yet such sudden changes take place daily in the world of crime and passion.  In one uncalled-for confession, of which it is hard to trace the smallest reasonable cause, the intricate wickednesses of a lifetime are revealed and repeated; in the mysterious impulse of a moment the murderer turns back and delivers himself to justice; under an influence for which there is often no accounting, the woman who has sinned securely through long years lays bare her guilt and throws herself upon the mercy of the man whom she has so skilfully and consistently deceived.  We know the fact.  The reason we cannot know.  Perhaps, to natures not wholly bad, sin is a poison of which the moral organization can only bear a certain fixed amount, great or small, before rejecting it altogether and with loathing.  We do not know.  We speak of the workings of conscience, not understanding what we mean.  It is like that subtle something which we call electricity; we can play with it, command it, lead it, neutralise it and die of it, make light and heat with it, or language and sound, kill with it and cure with it, while absolutely ignorant of its nature.  We are no nearer to a definition of it than the Greek who rubbed a bit of amber and lifted with it a tiny straw, and from amber, Elektron called the something electricity.  Are we even as near as that to a definition of the human conscience?

The change that had come over Unorna, whether it was to be lasting or not, was profound.  The circumstances under which it took place are plain enough.  The reasons must be left to themselves—­it remains only to tell the consequences which thereon followed.

The first of these was a hatred of that extraordinary power with which nature had endowed her, which brought with it a determination never again to make use of it for any evil purpose, and, if possible, never even for good.