Not helpless--no, never helpless--but so ignorant that all her life that had seemed to her, a quarter of an hour ago, so tensely crowded with events and crises was now empty and barren like the old straw-smelling cab at home.

She did not want to offend her aunts and hurt their feelings, but she was a living, breathing, independent creature and she must go her own way.

Neither they nor their chapel should stop her--no, not the chapel nor any one in it.
She was standing, motionless, in the dark cold hall, wondering whether any one had heard her enter, when she was suddenly conscious of two eyes that watched her--two steady fiery eyes suspended as it seemed in mid air.

She realised that it was the cat.

The cat hated her and she hated it.