k,
round that Long Water, talking of sin and its pleasures, feeling
every day that I was being drawn a little nearer to the precipice,
that I was losing every day some power of resistance. It is
terrifying to lose sense of the reality of things, to lose one's own
will, to feel that one is merely a stone that has been set rolling.
To feel like this is to experience the obtuse and intense sensations
of nightmare, and this I know well. Have I not told you, Monsignor,
of the dreams from which I suffered, which brought me to you, and
which forced me to confession, those terrific dreams which used to
drive me dazed from my bed, flying through the door of my room into
the passage to wake up before the window, saying to myself:

"'Oh, my God! it is a dream, it is a dream, thank God, it is only a
dream!'

"But I must not allow myself to dwell on that time, to do so throws
me back again, and I have almost escaped those fits of brooding in
which I see my soul lost for ever. Sooner than go back to that time
I would become a nun, and remain here until the end of my life,
eating the poorest food, feeling hungry all day; anything were
better than to go back to that time!"

In another letter she said:

"I am afraid I shall always continue to be looked upon as an actress
by the Prioress, and St. Teresa's ecstasies and ravishments, with
added miracles and prophecies, would not avail to blot out the
motley which continues in her eyes, though it dropped from me three
years ago.

"'My dear Evelyn, you have hardly any perception of what our life
is,' she said to me yesterday. 'You know it only from the outside,
you are still an actress, you are acting on a different stage, that
is all.' And it seemed to me that the Prioress thought she was
speaking very wisely, that she flattered herself on her wisdom, and
rejoiced not a little in my discomfiture, visible on my face, for
one cannot control the change of expression, 'which gives one away,'
as the phrase goes. She laughed, and we walked on together, I
genuinely perplexed and pathetically anxious to discover if she had
spoken the truth, fearing lest I might be adapting myself to a new
part, not quite sure, hoping, however, that something new had come
into my life. On such occasions one peers into one's heart, but
however closely I peer it is impossible for me to say that the
Prioress is right or that she was wrong. Everybody will say she is
right, of course, for it is so obvious that a