The tragedy and its aftermath—Clare, crowding her own guilt below the threshold of consciousness, persuades herself and Alwynne that the latter is in part to blame—brings Alwynne to the verge of breakdown, and so she goes on leave to relatives in the country. A sympathetic cousin who is something of an amateur psychiatrist gradually probes to the root of her trouble and offers an impersonal estimate of Clare, whom he has never met and has reconstructed solely from the girl’s still loyal accounts. His opinion gives her pause, and subsequent encounters with Clare, so shaken by the suicide and by Alwynne’s long absence that she lacks her usual finesse, complete the girl’s disillusionment. She finally marries the cousin. This overlong narrative carries psychological conviction but suffers from blurred focus. Clare’s heartlessness once her victims are enthralled supports the initial claim that sadism is its thesis, but the spell she casts is variant passion no less intense for being subjectively induced and never allowed expression (the one real caress in four-hundred pages figures early in her conquest of Alwynne). This passionate element assumes primary importance during her final struggle against a male rival. Close to the end a woman who has known Clare all her life tells her: When you allow [a girl] to attach herself passionately to you, you are feeding and at the same time deflecting from its natural channel the strongest impulse of her life.... Alwynne needs a good concrete husband to love, not a fantastic ideal that she calls friendship and clothes in your face and figure. You are doing her a deep injury.... I tell you, it’s vampirism. And when she is squeezed dry and flung aside, who will the next victim be? One day you’ll grow old. What will you do when your glamour’s gone? I tell you, Clare Hartill, you’ll die of hunger in the end.[32] Egotism is implied here, but the main issue is variant seduction, and Clare’s retort is a long boast as to her prowess in that line amply justified by earlier incidents. She concludes defiantly that she and Alwynne “suffice each other. Thank God there are some women who can do without marriage.” The reply is: “Poor Clare! Are the grapes very sour?” Surprisingly, this “final triumphant insult” touches the quick. The insult could cut through her defenses and strike at her very self, because it was true. Her pride agonized. She had thought herself shrouded, invulnerable.... She sat and shuddered at the wound dealt; ... at the arrow-tip rankling in it still.[33]