It was always felt; it remained like a mark on her soul, a sort of mystic wound, to be contemplated, to be meditated over.

And she said further to Mrs.Fyne, in the course of many confidences provoked by that contemplation, that, as long as that woman called her names, it was almost soothing, it was in a manner reassuring.
Her imagination had, like her body, gone off in a wild bound to meet the unknown; and then to hear after all something which more in its tone than in its substance was mere venomous abuse, had steadied the inward flutter of all her being.
"She called me a little fool more times than I can remember.

I! A fool! Why, Mrs.Fyne! I do assure you I had never yet thought at all; never of anything in the world, till then.

I just went on living.

And one can't be a fool without one has at least tried to think.