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 But what stilled her was a return of that sense of her helplessness before Fidelia Netley which had struck her, upon that first morning, when she came into the history class-room and saw Fidelia sitting in the sun.

And Alice, standing quiet with David's arms about her, believed him, that he hadn't meant to do anything. She could believe even that Fidelia, in going to the lake that morning, had not meant or planned anything against her. What Alice was feeling against her, and that which paralysed her to this quiet, was not intentions and plans but impulses, wholly unplanned and ten times as terrible to her, therefore.

She felt that she could not fight them and she had to fight; for if she did not, it meant giving him up—him whom she had taken when he was a queer and awkward boy four years ago and whom she had brought to this.

Strength—her soft, passionate strength—came back to her fingers and she clung to him. "You're mine!" she whispered to him. "Mine! Mine! Mine!"

And he, holding her, told her: "Of course I'm yours, of course."