That dread of what was before her which had been eating up her courage slowly in the course of odious years, flamed up into an access of panic, that sort of headlong panic which had already driven her out twice to the top of the cliff-like quarry.

She jumped up saying to herself: "Why not now?
At once! Yes.

I'll do it now--in the dark!" The very horror of it seemed to give her additional resolution.
She came down the staircase quietly, and only on the point of opening the door and because of the discovery that it was unfastened, she remembered Captain Anthony's threat to stay in the garden all night.

She hesitated.
She did not understand the mood of that man clearly.

He was violent.