decentish men went before this beanfeast began, she would go into retreat for the rest of her life. . . .
She fell into a sort of dim trance after she had looked at her watch. Often she went into these dim trances . . . ever since she had been a girl at school with Father Consett for her spiritual adviser! . . . She seemed to be aware of the father moving about the room, lifting up a book and putting it down. . . . Her ghostly friend! . . . Goodness, he was unpresentable enough, with his broad, open face that always looked dirtyish, his great dark eyes, and his great mouth. . . . But a saint and a martyr. . . . She felt him there. . . . What had they murdered him for? Hanged at the word of a half-mad, half-drunk subaltern, because he had heard the confession of some of the rebels the night before they were taken. . . . He was over in the far corner of the room. . . . She heard him say: they had not understood, the men that had hanged him. That is what you would say, father . . . Have mercy on them, for they know not what they do. . . .
Then have mercy on me, for half the time I don't know what I'm doing! . . . It was like a spell you put on me. At Lobscheid. Where my mother was, when I came back from that place without my clothes. . . . You said, didn't you, to mother, but she told me afterwards: The real hell for that poor boy, meaning Christopher, will come when he falls in love with some young girl—as, mark me, he will. . . . For she, meaning me, will tear the world down to get at him. . . . And when mother said she was certain I would never do anything vulgar you obstinately did not agree. . . . You knew me. . . .
She tried to rouse herself and said: He knew me.
