She thought:
It must be true that I don’t count.... There must be something lacking in me or else I could make Justin look up and want to talk to me.... I’m engaged to him.... Why can’t I put my arms round his neck and say “You must do what I want now?”
She thought again:
It is queer.... I’m so near to Justin.... His hand touches mine when I pass him things ... and yet all the time we’re in two different worlds.... He doesn’t know that.... Sometimes I think he doesn’t know anything....
She thought:
It hurts me to be with him, and it hurts me not to be with him ... it hurts me more every day.... And yet—this pain—I wouldn’t miss it.... It’s doing things to me all day long.... It’s making me grow.... I feel so wise.... Justin would say “conceit” if I told him, but it isn’t conceit.... I am awfully wise.... I know Justin all through.... He’s just ordinary to Coral and every one. He’s just ordinary to himself.... But I see right inside—what God sees. It’s like being God to love a person so.
And then this poor, triumphant, heaven-scaling humanity stumbled and lost foothold and fell back again to Mother Earth.... I wish—she thought wistfully—I wish he could want, sometimes, to kiss me....
But at that she caught her breath in a sort of horror at herself. What had come to her? She could not understand herself any more. She felt helpless and despairing and yet filled with faint, wicked happiness. She looked across at Justin’s calm profile with a childish, mad impulse of appeal. If only he had time to help her!... And yet, of course, she could never even tell him that she wanted help.... These thoughts would make Justin hate her if he knew.... She must not, must never think a thought she could not own to Justin.... She must stamp out the incomprehensible feelings that, in spite of herself, were surging over her mind, the feelings that were as beautiful as music and yet, somehow, were wicked.
All the panic-stricken summer day she struggled like a half-tamed bird to free her child’s heart from the thrilling touch, the tightening grip of ‘wickedness.’
She stayed late at the Priory, though she knew, guiltily, that Aunt Adela was away and Gran’papa would eat a lonely supper. But she dreaded the solitary walk home and the quiet evening and the long night of thoughts that lay before her.