midday
Life was going on , then , and dragging her at its wheels . She could neither check its rush nor wrench loose from it and drop out -- oh , how blessedly -- into darkness and cessation . She must go bounding on , racked , broken , but alive in every fibre . The most she could hope was a few hours ' respite , not from her own terrors , but from the pressure of outward claims : the midday halt , during which the victim is unbound while his torturers rest from their efforts . Till her father 's return she would have the house to herself , and , the question of the venison despatched , could give herself to long lonely pacings of the empty rooms , and shuddering subsidences upon her pillow . Her first impulse , as the mist cleared from her brain , was the habitual one of reaching out for ultimate relations . She wanted to know the worst ; and for her , as she saw in a flash , the worst of it was the core of fatality in what had happened .