they are not expected to be present.

Unorna was familiar with convent life and was aware that the Benediction
was over, and that the hour for the evening meal was approaching. A fire
had been lighted in her sitting-room, but the air was still very cold
and she sat wrapped in her furs as when she had arrived, leaning back
in a corner of the sofa, her head inclined forward, and one white hand
resting on the green baize cloth which covered the table.

She was very tired, and the absolute stillness was refreshing and
restoring after the long-drawn-out emotions of the stormy day. Never, in
her short and passionate life, had so many events been crowded into the
space of a few hours. Since the morning she had felt almost everything
that her wild, high-strung nature was capable of feeling--love, triumph,
failure, humiliation--anger, hate, despair, and danger of sudden death.
She was amazed when, looking back, she remembered that at noon on that
day her life and all its interests had been stationary at the point
familiar to her during a whole month, the point that still lay within
the boundaries of hope's kingdom, the point at which the man she loved
had wounded her by speaking of brotherly affection and sisterly regard.
She could almost believe, when she thought of it all, that some one had
done to her as she had done to others, that she had been cast into a
state of sleep, and had been forced against her will to live through the
storms of years in the lethargy of an hour. And yet, despite all, her
memory was distinct, her faculties were awake, her intellect had lost
none of its clearness, even in the last and worst hour of all. She could
recall each look on the Wanderer's face, each tone of his cold speech,
each intonation of her own passionate outpourings. Her strong memory had
retained all, and there was not the slightest break in the continuity of
her recollections. But there was little comfort to be derived from the
certainty that she had not been dreaming, and that everything had really
taken place precisely as she remembered it. She would have given all she
possessed, which was much, to return to the hour of noon on that same
day.

In so far as a very unruly nature can understand itself, Unorna
understood the springs of the actions, she regretted and confessed that
in all likelihood she would do again as she had done at each successive
stage. Indeed, since the last great outbreak of her heart, she realised
more than e