But in that intervening time, short as it was, she had
awakened. Rude as had been the circumstances that had aroused her, they
had nevertheless been effective. Without volition upon her part the
panorama of another life had been unrolled before her eyes. Sensations,
thoughts, impulses of which she had never previously dreamed had been
hers. Passions unconceived had stalked before her gaze. More a nightmare
on the whole than an awakening it had all been; yet nevertheless the
experience had been hers. Much of its meaning had passed her by. Events
had crowded too thickly for her to grasp the whole; but _en masse_ the
effect had been definite--startlingly definite. Unbelievable as it may
seem, for the first time in her existence she had aroused to the
consciousness of being an individual entity. The inevitable
metamorphosis of age, the thing which differentiates a child from an
adult, belated long in her passive life, had at last taken place.
Bewilderingly sudden, so sudden that as yet she had not adjusted herself
to the change, had barely become conscious thereof, yet certain as
existence itself, the transformation had come to pass. Looking back
there that afternoon, looking where the town had been and now was not,
mingling with the impressions of a day full to overflowing, there came
to the girl for the first time a definite appreciation of this thing
that she had done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear
again, passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place,
taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth Landor the
woman.
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