People spoke of her enviously as having experienced so much; living in all parts of the world, knowing people of all nations and kinds.

But it seemed all of that had been mere splashing around on the beach.

She was out in the big waves now.
She looked at the girl; looked with the eyes of one who would understand.
And what she saw was that some one, something, had, as it were, struck a blow at the center, and the girl, the something that really _was_ her, had gone to pieces.

Everything was scattered.

Even her features scarcely seemed to belong to each other, so how must it not be with those other things, inner things, oh, things one did not know what to call?
Was it because she could not get things together it seemed to her she must make them all stop?
Was that it?
Did people lose the power to hold themselves in the one that made you _you_?
What could do that?
Something that reached the center; not many things could; something, perhaps, that kept battering at it for a long time, and just shook it at first, and then-- It was too dreadful to think of it that way.