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Gissing, George, 1857-1903

"The Unclassed"

Now that everything had turned out
differently from what she had grown to anticipate with certainty,
she found herself powerless to face the unexpected. Why had Waymark
failed her?--she could do no more than repeat the question a
thousand times, till the faculty of self-communing forsook her. It
was as though the sun should fail one morning to rise upon the
world, and men should stand hopeless of day for ever.
She wondered vaguely whither she had been brought. At one moment she
seemed to have been waiting an eternity in this unknown room,
Julian's face and voice unspeakably remote; then again she would
look round and wonder that she no longer saw the hare walls and
barred window of her cell, the present seeming only a dream. All the
processes of her mind were slow, sinewless. She tried to hope for
something, to expect that something would happen, but could not
summon the energy. Resentment, revolt, bitterness of spirit, of
these things she knew just as little. They had been strong enough
within her at first, but how long ago that seemed! She had no
thought of time in the present; to sit waiting for an hour meant as
little as to wait five minutes; such was the habit that had become
impressed upon her by interminable days and nights.


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