Until Ryle's voice roused her she had been swimming in space and
eternity; behind her, like a little boat bobbing distressfully in her
track, was the scene of that early morning with which that day had opened.
She saw herself, as it were, the body of some quite other woman, lying in
that so familiar bedroom and saying "No"--saying it again and again and
again. "No. No. No."
Why had she said "No," and was it not in reality another woman who had
said it, and why had he been so quiet? It was not his way. There had been
no storm. She shivered a little behind her gloves.
"Dearly beloved brethren," began the Precentor, pleading, impersonal.
Slowly her brain, like a little dark fish striking up from deep green
waters, rose to the surface of her consciousness. What she was then most
surely aware of was that she was on the very edge of something; it was a
quite physical sensation, as though she had been walking over mist-soaked
downs and had suddenly hesitated, to find herself looking down along the
precipitances of jagged black rock. It was "jagged black rock" over which
she was now peering.
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