Miss Quincey Stands Back As it happened on a Saturday morning she had plenty of time to think about it.

All the afternoon and the evening and the night lay before her; she was powerless to cope with Sunday and the night beyond that.
The remarkable revelation made to her by Mrs.Moon was so great a shock that her mind refused to realize it all at once.

It was an outrage to all the meek reticences and chastities of her spirit.

But she owned its truth; she saw it now, the thing they all had seen, that she only could not see.
She had sinned the sin of sins, the sin of youth in middle-age.
Now it was not imagination in Miss Quincey, so much as the tradition of St.Sidwell's, that gave her innocent affection the proportions of a crime.

Miss Quincey had lived all her life in ignorance of her own nature, having spent the best part of five-and-forty years in acquiring other knowledge.