crazy . . . sometimes I can't think any more, and I don't know what I'm doing. . . . It was like that to-day . . . all day. . . . I've been going about like a crazy woman."
And then, slowly, she began, in a confused, incoherent fashion, to tell him the whole story of her misery from the very beginning at Megambo when the Englishwoman had suddenly appeared out of the forest. It all seemed to begin then, she said, and it had gone on and on ever since, growing worse and worse. She hadn't any friends—at least none save Mabelle; and the others didn't want her to see Mabelle. Besides, Mabelle didn't seem to help: whatever she advised only made matters worse.
The Reverend Castor interrupted her. "But I'm your friend, Naomi . . . I've always been your friend. You could have come to me long ago."
"But you're a preacher," she said. "And that's not the same thing."
"But I'm a man, too, Naomi . . . a human being."
And then she even told him about Emma while he interrupted her from time to time by saying, "Can it be?" and, "It hardly seems possible—a woman like Emma Downes, who has always been one of the pillars, the foundation-stones, of our church! How much goes on of which we poor blind creatures know nothing."
And Naomi said, "I know. No one will ever believe me. They'll all believe that I'm nothing and that she's a good, brave woman. I can't fight her, Reverend Castor. I can't . . . and sometimes I think she tries to poison him against me."
The trembling hand came to rest once more on her shoulder. There was a long silence, and presently he
