When old Martha brought the message for her to go to tea with Miss
Kendal, Mary slunk out through the orchard into the Back Lane. At that
moment the prospect of talking two hours with Miss Kendal was
unendurable.
And there was no other prospect. As long as she lived in Morfe there
would be nothing--apart from her real, secret life there would be
nothing--to look forward to but that. If it was not Miss Kendal it would
be Miss Louisa or Dorsy or old Mrs. Heron. People talked about dying of
boredom who didn't know that you could really die of it.
If only you didn't keep on wanting somebody--somebody who wasn't there.
If, before it killed you, you could kill the desire to know another mind,
a luminous, fiery crystal, to see it turn, shining and flashing. To talk
to it, to listen to it, to love the human creature it belonged to.
She envied her youth its capacity for day-dreaming, for imagining
interminable communions. Brilliant hallucinations of a mental hunger.
Better than nothing.... If this went on the breaking-point must come.
Suddenly you would go smash. Smash. Your mind would die in a delirium of
hunger.