And she must get up at once.
Her sick mind shrank from that, as from a culminating terror. She was desperately tired; her body ached as if it had been beaten. Dressing was a monstrous and impossible feat.... It could not be.... Yet her step-mother would come—she was between God and Mrs. Denny—and God had left her in the lurch.
She lay shielding her eyes from the strong light.
The pressure on her eyeballs was causing the usual kaleidoscopic ring of light to form within her closed lids. The phenomenon had always been a childish amusement to her; she was adept at the shifting pressure that could vary colour and pattern. She watched idly. Red changed to green, purple followed yellow, and the ring narrowed to a pin-point of light on its background of watered silk; then it broke up as usual into starry fragments. But they danced no dazzling fire-dance for her ere they merged again into the yellow ring; to her distracted fancy they were letters—fiery letters, that formed and broke and formed again. G—O—D—then an H and a P and an L. She puzzled over them. "God hopes?" "God helps?" But He hadn't.... "God helps?" A Voice in her ears exactly like her own took it up—"Those that help themselves." It spoke so loudly that she shrank. The universe echoed to Its boom: yet she knew so well that the Voice was only in her own head.
No wonder her head ached, when it was all full of Lights and Voices.... And Miss Hartill would be angry if she took Them to school.... If only she need not go to school.... Why—why had God cheated her? "He helped those——" Was that what They meant?
She looked about her, brightening yet uncertain; then her long plait of hair caught her eye. Lazily she lifted it, disentangled a strand no thicker than coarse string, and doubling it about her throat, began to tighten it, using her fingers as a lever, till the blood sang in her ears. She had sat upright in bed for the greater ease. Suddenly she caught sight of her face in the wardrobe mirror. It was growing pink and puffy; the eyes goggled a little. The sensation of choking grew unendurable. Instinctively her fingers freed themselves and the noose fell apart. She swung forward, panting, and watched her features grow normal again.
"It's no good. Oh, I am a coward," cried Louise, wearily.
Her mother's old-fashioned travelling clock, chiming the quarter, answered her, and for a moment forced her thoughts back from those borderlands where sanity ends. Habit asserted itself; she was filled with everyday anxieties. She was late, certainly for breakfast, probably for school. She jumped out of bed, washed and dressed in panic speed, collected her belongings and hurried from the house.
Her father, hearing the gate clack, glanced up from his newspaper.
"Has that child had any breakfast?" he demanded, uneasily.