uess it. I could not. I could not think
what there might be. It seems only a curious and not quite pleasant thing, that the
lady I have imagined Mrs Brink to be should ever have looked at Selina Dawes, at
seventeen, and seen the shadow of her own dead mother in her, and persuaded
her to visit her at night, to make that shadow grow thick.
But we did not talk of it. I only asked her more about Peter Quick. I said, He,
then, had come only for her?—Only for her, she said. And why had he
come?—Why? He was her guardian, her familiar-spirit. He was her control. ''He
came for me,'' she said simply, ''and—what could I do then? I was his.''
Now her face had grown pale, with spots of colour at the cheeks. Now I began
to feel an excitement in her, I felt it rising in her, it was like a quality upon the
sour air of the cell.—I almost envied it. I said quietly, ''What was it like, when he
came to you?'' and she shook her head—Oh! How could she say? It was like losing
her self, like having her own self pulled from her, as if a self could be a gown, or
gloves, or stockings . . .
I said, ''It sounds terrible!''—''It was terrible!'' she said. ''But it was also
marvellous. It was everything to me, it was my life changed. I might have moved,
then, like a spirit, from one dull sphere into a higher, better one.''
I frowned, not understanding. She said, how could she explain it to me? Oh,