But what bodily illness was ever like this pain? This certainty that he was gone without a farewell⁠—this cruel conviction that fate and pursuing furies⁠—a woman’s envy and a priest’s bigotry⁠—would suffer me to see him no more? What wonder that the second evening found me like the first⁠—untamed, tortured, again pacing a solitary room in an unalterable passion of silent desolation?

Madame Beck did not herself summon me to bed that night⁠—she did not come near me: she sent Ginevra Fanshawe⁠—a more efficient agent for the purpose she could not have employed. Ginevra’s first words⁠—“Is your headache very bad tonight?” (for Ginevra, like the rest, thought I had a headache⁠—an intolerable headache which made me frightfully white in the face, and insanely restless in the foot)⁠—her first words, I say, inspired the impulse to flee anywhere, so that it were only out of reach. And soon, what followed⁠—plaints about her own headaches⁠—completed the business.