* * * * *
"It seems perfectly dreadful of me to have any doubts at all, after all
this; but ... but you don't know how queer it seems. There's a kind of
thick hedge--" she waved a hand illustratively to the hazels beside
her--"a kind of thick hedge between me and Easter--I suppose it's the
illness: the nuns tell me so. Well, it's like that. I can see myself,
and Laurie, and Mr. Cathcart, and all the rest of them, like figures
moving beyond; and they all seem to me to be behaving rather madly, as
if they saw something that I can't see.... Oh! it's hopeless....
"Well, the first theory I have is that these little figures, myself
included, really see something that I can't now: that there really was
something or somebody, which makes them dance about like that. (Yes:
that's not grammar; but you understand, don't you?) Well, I'll come
back to that presently.
"And my next theory is this ... is this"--Maggie sipped her tea
meditatively--"my next theory is that the whole thing was simple
imagination, or, rather, imagination acting upon a few little facts
and coincidences, and perhaps a little fraud too. Do you know the way,
if you're jealous or irritable, the way in which everything seems to
fit in? Every single word the person you're suspicious of utters all
fits in and corroborates your idea.
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