noon
She saw no one , not even Jane Lucy . Outside , in the passage , and in the inner room she heard the footsteps of the children and their little shrill voices ; each sound accentuated the stabbing pulse of pain . It was impossible to darken the room , and the insufferable sunlight poured in unchecked through the thin yellow blinds and plagued her brain , till the nerves of vision throbbed , beat for beat , with the nerves of torment . At noon she had only one sensation of brilliant surging pain . She dozed and her headache lifted . When she woke her body was weak as if it had had a fever , but her mind closed on reality with the impact of a force delayed . There was a thing not yet quite real to her , a thing that seemed to belong to the region of bodily pain , to be born there as a bad dream might be born ; a thing that had been there last night among other things , that , as she stared at it , became more prominent , more poignant than they .