She had renounced something and was now--how could she express it ?--not quite "in the running" for life.

She had always known that Mr.Clacton and Mrs.Seal were not in the running, and across the gulf that separated them she had seen them in the guise of shadow people, flitting in and out of the ranks of the living--eccentrics, undeveloped human beings, from whose substance some essential part had been cut away.

All this had never struck her so clearly as it did this afternoon, when she felt that her lot was cast with them for ever.

One view of the world plunged in darkness, so a more volatile temperament might have argued after a season of despair, let the world turn again and show another, more splendid, perhaps.

No, Mary thought, with unflinching loyalty to what appeared to her to be the true view, having lost what is best, I do not mean to pretend that any other view does instead.