It
was not self-command that she needed, but a steady interior
concentration of forces.
She began again that resolute wordless play of the will--dismissing
with a series of efforts the intellectual images of thought--that play
of the will which, it seemed, had affected the boy opposite in a new
way. She had no idea of what the crisis would be, or how it would
come. She only saw that she had struck upon a new path that led
somewhere. She must follow it.
Some little sound roused her; she opened her eyes and looked up.
He had shifted his position, and for a moment her heart leapt with
hope. For he sat now leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, and his
head in his hands, and in the shaded lamplight it seemed that he was
shaking.
She too moved, and the rustle of her dress seemed to reach him. He
glanced up, and before he dropped his head again she caught a clear
sight of his face. He was laughing, silently and overpoweringly,
without a sound....
For a moment the nausea seized her so fiercely that she gasped,
catching at her throat; and she stared at that bowed head and shaking
shoulders with a horror that she had not felt before. The laughter was
worse than all: and it was a little while before she perceived its
unreality.
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