Even before leaving London, she had begun to experience a frequent
sadness of mood, tending at times to weariness and depression, which
foreshadowed new changes in her inner life. The fresh delight in
nature and art had worn off in some degree; she read less, and her
thoughts took the habit of musing upon the people and circumstances
about her, also upon the secrets of the years to come. She grew more
conscious of the mystery in her own earlier life, and in the
conditions which now surrounded her. A sense which at times besets
all imaginative minds came upon her now and then with painful force;
a fantastic unreality would suddenly possess all she saw and heard;
it seemed as if she had been of a sudden transported out of the old
existence into this new and unrealised position; if any person spoke
to her, it was difficult to feel that she was really addressed and
must reply; was it not all a mere vision she was beholding, out of
which she would presently awake! Such moments were followed by dark
melancholy. This life she was leading could not last, but would pass
away in some fearful shock of soul. Once she half believed herself
endowed with the curse of a hideous second-sight.
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