But the more absurd an illusion, the more it will not be shaken off.

For see! the spider was kissing her hand! Then she seemed to have made a great effort and to have broken the web.

But her wings were torn, and her feet were shackled by the fine strands that still adhered.
She could not get them off.

Wouldn't somebody help her, even as she had many a time picked off the webs from a fly's feet out of sheer pity?
And all day she would perpetually return into these half-conscious states and feel the spider's web about her feet, and ask over and over again if somebody wouldn't help her to get out of the meshes.
Toward evening her mother brought her a cup of tea and a piece of toast, and for the first time in the remembered life of the daughter made an endeavor to show a little tenderness for her.

It was a clumsy endeavor, for when the great gulf is once fixed between mother and child it is with difficulty bridged.