It seemed I must be stimulated into action.
I must be goaded, driven, stung, forced to energy.

My little morsel of human affection, which I prized as if it were a solid pearl, must melt in my fingers and slip thence like a dissolving hailstone.

My small adopted duty must be snatched from my easily contented conscience.

I had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains.

Fate would not so be pacified; nor would Providence sanction this shrinking sloth and cowardly indolence.
One February night--I remember it well--there came a voice near Miss Marchmont's house, heard by every inmate, but translated, perhaps, only by one.