Her vision seemed to lay out the lines of her life until death in a
way which satisfied her sense of harmony. It only needed a persistent
effort of thought, stimulated in this strange way by the crowd and the
noise, to climb the crest of existence and see it all laid out once
and for ever. Already her suffering as an individual was left behind
her. Of this process, which was to her so full of effort, which
comprised infinitely swift and full passages of thought, leading from
one crest to another, as she shaped her conception of life in this
world, only two articulate words escaped her, muttered beneath her
breath--"Not happiness--not happiness."
She sat down on a seat opposite the statue of one of London's heroes
upon the Embankment, and spoke the words aloud. To her they
represented the rare flower or splinter of rock brought down by a
climber in proof that he has stood for a moment, at least, upon the
highest peak of the mountain. She had been up there and seen the world
spread to the horizon. It was now necessary to alter her course to
some extent, according to her new resolve. Her post should be in one
of those exposed and desolate stations which are shunned naturally by
happy people.
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