She wondered if she were not mad; she felt that she soon should be among these loathsome creatures.

Better almost to have died, than to slowly go mad in this confinement.
-- We beg the reader's pardon.

This is not history, which has just been written.

It is really what would have occurred if this were a novel.
If this were a work of fiction, we should not dare to dispose of Laura otherwise.

True art and any attention to dramatic proprieties required it.