As much as possible she kept apart from all, nursing her bitter self-reproach.
Then it was that she sought relief in the schemes which naturally occur to a woman thus miserable.

She would relinquish her life as a teacher, and bury her wretchedness beneath physical hardship.

There was anguish enough in the world, and she would go to live in the midst of it, would undertake the hardest and most revolting tasks in some infirmary: thus might she crush out of herself the weakness which was her disgrace.

It remained only a vision.

That which was terribly real, the waste and woe of her heart, grew ever.
She yielded.