To herself she seemed to be suffering a kind of trance, without detriment to her consciousness.

The chattering and grimacing girls appeared before her as grotesque unrealities, puppets animated in some marvellous way, and set to caricature humanity.

She tried to realise that one of them was a woman like herself, who had just consented to be a man's wife; but it was impossible to her to regard this as anything but an aping of things which at other times had a solemn meaning.

She found herself gazing at Geraldine as one does at some singular piece of mechanism with a frivolous purpose.

And it was not only the individuals that impressed her thus; these two represented life and the world.