"Why, I deserved a much worse humiliation," Sylvia went on. "And I got it, too. The fact was that when I ate those rose leaves and became a woman again I was so elated really that I thought everything I had done in the shape of an ass had been obliterated by the disenchantment. Ah, how much, how tremendously I deserve the humiliation which that Russian officer inflicted. And then mercifully came this fever on top of it, and I have got to rise from this bed and confront life from an entirely different point of view. I'm going to start from where I was that afternoon in Brompton Cemetery, when I was speculating about the human soul. Obviously, now I look back at it, I was just then beginning to apprehend that I might, after all, possess a soul with obligations to something more permanent than the body it inhabited. What a fool Philip was! If he'd only nurtured my soul instead of my body. If he'd only not bit by bit dried it up to something so small that it became powerless to compete with the arrogant body that held it. I wonder if he's still alive. But of course he's still alive. He's only forty-six now. Really I'd like to write and explain what happened. However, he'd only laugh--he was always so very contemptuous of souls. Anyway, nothing will ever induce me to believe that my soul hasn't grown in the most extraordinary way during this fever. What a triumph she has had over her poor body. Where's that looking-glass?" She called to the nun and begged her to bring the looking-glass again. The nun brought it and tried to console Sylvia for the loss of her hair. "But I'm rejoicing in it," Sylvia declared. "I'm rejoicing in the sight I present to the world. Look here, can't you sit down beside me and tell me something about your religion? I'm absolutely bursting for a revelation. You fast, don't you, and spend long nights and days in prayer? Well, I am in the sort of condition in which you find yourself at the end of a long bout of fasting and prayer. I'm as light as a feather. I could achieve levitation with very little difficulty." The nun regarded Sylvia in perplexity. "Have you thanked Almighty God for your recovery?" she asked. "No, of course I haven't. I can't thank somebody I know nothing about," said Sylvia impatiently. "Besides, it's no good thanking God for my recovery unless I am sure I ought to be grateful. Mere living for the sake of living seems to me as sensual as any other appetite. Sister, can't you give me the key to life?" The nun sheltered herself beneath an array of pious phrases; she was like a person who has been surprised naked and hurriedly flings on all the clothes in reach. "All that you're saying means nothing to me," said Sylvia, sadly. "And the reason of it is that you've never lived. You've only looked at evil from the outside; you've only heard of unbelief."