e intuitive perception
not merely of danger, for she did not know what was alarming her, but in
the sense of the security being gone. And not only security. I don't
know how to explain it clearly. Look! Even a small child lives, plays
and suffers in terms of its conception of its own existence. Imagine,
if you can, a act coming in suddenly with a force capable of shattering
that very conception itself. It was only because of the girl being
still so much of a child that she escaped mental destruction; that, in
other words she got over it. Could one conceive of her more mature,
while still as ignorant as she was, one must conclude that she would
have become an idiot on the spot--long before the end of that
experience. Luckily, people, whether mature or not mature (and who
really is ever mature?) are for the most part quite incapable of
understanding what is happening to them: a merciful provision of nature
to preserve an average amount of sanity for working purposes in this
world...

"But we, my dear Marlow, have the inestimable advantage of understanding
what is happening to others," I struck in. "Or at least some of us seem
to. Is that too a provision of nature? And what is it for? Is it that
we may amuse ourselves gossiping about each other's affairs? You for
instance seem--"

"I don't know what I seem," Marlow silenced me, "and surely life must be
amused somehow. It would be still a very respectable provision if it
were only for that end. But from that same provision of understanding,
there springs in us compassion, charity, indignation, the sense of
solidarity; and in minds of any largeness an inclination to that
indulgence which is next door to affection. I don't mean to say that I
am inclined to an indulgent view of the precious couple which broke in
upon an unsuspecting girl. They came marching in (it's the very
expression she used later on to Mrs Fyne) but at her cry they stopped.
It must have been startling enough to them. It was like having the mask
torn off when you don't expect it. The man stopped, for good; he didn't
offer to move a step further. But, though the governess had come in
there for the very purpose of taking the mask off for the first time in
her life, she seemed to look upon the frightened cry as a fresh
provocation. `What are you screaming for, you little fool?' she said
advancing alone close to the girl who was affected exactly as if she had
seen Medusa's head with serpe