l the vast encumbrances of
the world that was in contact with her, from her father, and her
mother, and her lover, and all her acquaintance.

Repeatedly, in an ache of utter weariness she repeated: "I
have no father nor mother nor lover, I have no allocated place
in the world of things, I do not belong to Beldover nor to
Nottingham nor to England nor to this world, they none of them
exist, I am trammelled and entangled in them, but they are all
unreal. I must break out of it, like a nut from its shell which
is an unreality."

And again, to her feverish brain, came the vivid reality of
acorns in February lying on the floor of a wood with their
shells burst and discarded and the kernel issued naked to put
itself forth. She was the naked, clear kernel thrusting forth
the clear, powerful shoot, and the world was a bygone winter,
discarded, her mother and father and Anton, and college and all
her friends, all cast off like a year that has gone by, whilst
the kernel was free and naked and striving to take new root, to
create a new knowledge of Eternity in the flux of Time. And the
kernel was the only reality; the rest was cast off into
oblivion.

This grew and grew upon her. When she opened her eyes in the
afternoon and saw the window of her room and the faint, smoky
landscape beyond, this was all husk and shell lying by, all husk
and shell, she could see nothing else, she was enclosed still,
but loosely enclosed. There was a space between her and the
shell. It was burst, there was a rift in it. Soon she would have
her root fixed in a new Day, her nakedness would take itself the
bed of a new sky and a new air, this old, decaying, fibrous husk
would be gone.

Gradually she began really to sleep. She slept in the
confidence of her new reality. She slept breathing with her soul
the new air of a new world. The peace was very deep and
enrichening. She had her root in new ground, she was gradually
absorbed into growth.

When she woke at last it seemed as if a new day had come on
the earth. How long, how long had she fought through the dust
and obscurity, for this new dawn? How frail and fine and clear
she felt, like the most fragile flower that opens in the end of
winter. But the pole of night was turned and the dawn was coming
in.

Very far off was her old experience--Skrebensky, her
parting with him--very far off. Some things were real;
those first glamorous weeks. Before, these had seemed like
hallucination. Now the