Alex, with the impetuous unwisdom of the weak, one day forced an issue.
"Violet, do you trust me?"
"My dear child, what do you mean? Why shouldn't I trust you? Are you thinking of stealing my pearls?"
But Alex could not smile.
"Do you believe everything that I say?"
Violet looked at her and asked very gently:
"What makes you ask, Alex? You're not unhappy about the nonsense that child Pamela sometimes talks, are you?"
"No, not exactly. It's—it's just everything...." Alex looked miserable, tongue-tied.
"Oh, Alex, do try and take things more lightly. You make yourself so unhappy, poor child, with all this self-torment. Can't you take things as they come, more?"
The counsel found unavailing echo in Alex' own mind. She knew that her mental outlook was wrenched out of all gear, and she knew also, in some dim, undefined way, that a worn-out physical frame was responsible for much of her self-inflicted torment of mind. Sometimes she wondered whether the impending solution to her whole destiny, still hanging over her, would find her on the far side of the abyss which separates the normal from the insane.