But it was not only when there was some outward occasion, like this, that she suffered acute distress.

Froth as she might, those times of consciousness, which had begun with a moment of such sublime vision, were both growing on her and losing their lustre. They were become sinister. Life threatened to be no longer an incessant, automatic discharge of energy: more and more often, and when least expected, all that would suddenly drop from her, and she would remember that she was Emily , who had killed⁠ ⁠… and who was here ⁠ ⁠… and that Heaven alone knew what was going to happen to the incompetent little thing, by what miracle she was going to keep her end up.⁠ ⁠… Whenever this happened, her stomach seemed to drop away within her a hundred and fifty feet.