The next minute a light went up in that obscure and prophetic background of her brain; and she saw Rhoda Vivian and Bastian Cautley coming towards her, greeting her, with their kind faces shining.
She rose, turned from them, and went slowly home.
It was the last rent in the veil of illusion that Rhoda had spun so well.
Up till then Miss Quincey had seen only half the truth.

Now she had seen the whole, with all that Rhoda had disguised and kept hidden from her; the truth that kills or cures.
Miss Quincey did not go out again that day, but sat all afternoon silent in her chair.

Towards evening she became talkative and stayed up later than had been her wont since she recovered her freedom.

She seemed to be trying to make up to her aunt for a want of sociability in the past.
At eleven she got up and stood before the Old Lady in the attitude of a penitent.

Apparently she had been seized with a mysterious impulse of confession.
"Aunt," she said, "there's something I want to say to you." She paused, casting about in her mind for the sins she had committed.
They were three in all.
"I am afraid I have been very extravagant"-- she was thinking of the blouse--"and--and very foolish"-- she was thinking of Bastian Cautley--"and very selfish"-- she was thinking of her momentary desire to die.
"Juliana, if you're worrying about that money"-- the Old Lady was thinking of nothing else--"don't.