She had been talking, while the others played, to Alice Avery, about Bamborough Castle, the colour of the sands at evening, upon which Alice said she would write and settle the day, in August, and stooping, kissed her, at least touched her head with her hand, and Angela, positively unable to sit still, like one possessed of a wind-lashed sea in her heart, roamed up and down the room (the witness of such scene) throwing her arms out to relieve this excitement, this astonishment at the incredible stooping of the miraculous tree with the golden fruit at its summit- hadn't it dropped into her arms? She held it glowing to her breast, a thing not to be touched, thought of, spoken about, but left to glow there. And then, slowly putting there her stockings, there her slippers, folding her petticoat neatly on top, Angela, her other name being Williams, realized- how could she express it?- that after the dark churning of myriad ages here was light at the end of the tunnel; life, the world. Beneath her it lay- all good; all lovable. Such was her discovery.

I was born into dramatic scenes, lived in the landscape of shipwrecks and howling storms, with animal birth and death, religious visions, on the edge of chaos, with the possibility of something exciting happening at the same time as the threat of something going wrong. A part of me thinks that these wildly swinging fluctuations are, if not normal, at least desirable, and I grew to expect and even seek the edge. The alternative, of balance, seems pale and limited. I seek sensation and want to be more alive.