She hurried up the stairway and along the dark corridor. Once she nearly stumbled, and gave a gasp that seemed as loud as a cry. In her room she locked the door and lay down on the bed. Her heart was beating savagely. Rage surged in her—the rudeness of that witch, the insolence. She was obviously insane. “You see, I have feelings sometimes, deep within.” She had spoken gently, calmly; she was insane. “I feel you are so unhappy.” How dare she feel anything at all? That demented woman had looked at her with pity. Judith sat up abruptly and walked over to the mirror on the door. In the dim lamplight her face looked pale and worn, her dark eyes mournful. She returned to the bed and lay down. Ah, how dare she? “I feel you are so unhappy.” The sentimental words burned in her—she was burning up in them. Unhappiness like a fire broke out in her. Alone in her room, Judith wept.

The tears shocked her; she couldn’t stop. She wept because the woman had looked at her kindly and with pity. She wept because she was alone in a place where lovers lay on the rocks. She wept because things had not turned out the way she had hoped. She wept because she had loved the wrong man, she wept because she was no longer young, she wept because she had started and could not stop. She wept like a child, passionately, with terrible conviction. Her tears seemed to burn a flaming passage through her life. But it was intolerable. She detested it—the banality of tears. Grief wasn’t a flame—it was riot, it was madness. It had sprung to life at a madwoman’s touch. There was no reason for it. But it had fooled her; it must have been waiting there all along. She wept again for her beautiful weak man, who had done such terrible harm. She had been his greatest accomplice. With his hands in his pockets he had come strolling into her life, looking nervously about. He had not been sure, he had never been sure. And she, overflowing with new powers of sympathy, had beautifully understood. She had blossomed with understanding, she had grown brilliant with it. And so he had settled down uncertainly, looking at her with his beautiful nervous eyes, and she had dared to be happy: she had done that thing. And he had left, in stages; he had shown weakness even in that, while she in her panic had spun round him glittering delicate threads of understanding. Judith wept for those glittering threads, and for the fire that had raged in her, and for the deadness that had slowly come over things. She wept at the waste of it. She shook with weeping, it poured out of her, she couldn’t stop.