And all the time by a sort of double
consciousness she knew that what she thought was strange and not
due to her own volition. She knew that she was thinking the
thoughts of some other person, and she knew who. She felt herself
possessed.
But there was tremendous strength in the woman's nature. She had
inherited strength for good and righteous self-assertion, from the
evil strength of her ancestors. They had turned their own weapons
against themselves. She made an effort which seemed almost mortal,
but was conscious that the hideous thing was gone from her. She
thought her own thoughts. Then she scouted to herself the idea of
anything supernatural about the terrific experience. "I am
imagining everything," she told herself. She went on with her
preparations; she went to the bureau to take down her hair. She
looked in the glass and saw, instead of her softly parted waves of
hair, harsh lines of iron-gray under the black borders of an old-
fashioned head-dress. She saw instead of her smooth, broad
forehead, a high one wrinkled with the intensest concentration of
selfish reflections of a long life; she saw instead of her steady
blue eyes, black ones with depths of malignant reserve, behind a
broad meaning of ill will; she saw instead of her firm, benevolent
mouth one with a hard, thin line, a network of melancholic
wrinkles.
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