Marise heard nothing more of what he said, although his voice went on with words the meaning of which she could not grasp. It did not seem to her that she had really understood with the whole of her brain anything he had said, or that she had been able to take in the significance of it. She could think of nothing but a frightening sensation all over her body, as though the life were ebbing out of it. Every nerve and fiber in her seemed to have gone slack, beyond anything she had ever conceived. She could feel herself more and more unstrung and loosened like a violin string let down and down. The throbbing ache in her throat was gone. Everything was gone. She sat helpless and felt it slip away, till somewhere in the center of her body this ebbing of strength had run so far that it was a terrifying pain, like the approach of death. She was in a physical panic of alarm, but unable to make a sound, to turn her head. It was when she heard a loud insistent ringing in her head, and saw the stars waver and grow dim that she knew she was fainting away. * * * * * Then she was lying on the sofa in Cousin Hetty's sitting-room, Neale bending over her, holding a handkerchief which smelled of ammonia, and Agnes, very white, saying in an agitated voice, "It's because she hasn't eaten a thing all day. She wouldn't touch her lunch or supper. It's been turrible to see her." Marise's head felt quite clear and lucid now; her consciousness as if washed clean by its temporary absence from life. She tried to sit up and smile at Neale and Agnes. She had never fainted away in all her life before. She felt very apologetic and weak. And she felt herself in a queer, literal way another person. Neale sat down by her now and put his arm around her. His face was grave and solicitous, but not frightened, as Agnes was. It was like Neale not to lose his head. He said to Agnes, "Give me that cup of cocoa," and when it came, he held it to Marise's lips. "Take a good swallow of that," he said quietly. Marise was amazed to find that the hot sweet smell of the cocoa aroused in her a keen sensation of hunger. She drank eagerly, and taking in her hand the piece of bread and butter which Neale offered to her, she began to eat it with a child's appetite. She was not ashamed or self-conscious in showing this before Neale. One never needed to live up to any pose before Neale. His mere presence in the room brought you back, she thought, to a sense of reality. Sometimes if you had been particularly up in the air, it made you feel a little flat as she certainly did now. But how profoundly alive it made you feel, Neale's sense of things as they were.