“I know too much belief in one’s own power of resistance is not a good thing, but I can hardly bear to think of the suffering I endured during those weeks with Ulick Dean, walking in Hyde Park, round that Long Water, talking of sin and its pleasures, feeling every day that I was being drawn a little nearer to the precipice, that I was losing every day some power of resistance.  It is terrifying to lose sense of the reality of things, to lose one’s own will, to feel that one is merely a stone that has been set rolling.  To feel like this is to experience the obtuse and intense sensations of nightmare, and this I know well.  Have I not told you, Monsignor, of the dreams from which I suffered, which brought me to you, and which forced me to confession, those terrific dreams which used to drive me dazed from my bed, flying through the door of my room into the passage to wake up before the window, saying to myself: 

“’Oh, my God! it is a dream, it is a dream, thank God, it is only a dream!’

“But I must not allow myself to dwell on that time, to do so throws me back again, and I have almost escaped those fits of brooding in which I see my soul lost for ever.  Sooner than go back to that time I would become a nun, and remain here until the end of my life, eating the poorest food, feeling hungry all day; anything were better than to go back to that time!”

In another letter she said: 

“I am afraid I shall always continue to be looked upon as an actress by the Prioress, and St. Teresa’s ecstasies and ravishments, with added miracles and prophecies, would not avail to blot out the motley which continues in her eyes, though it dropped from me three years ago.

“’My dear Evelyn, you have hardly any perception of what our life is,’ she said to me yesterday.  ’You know it only from the outside, you are still an actress, you are acting on a different stage, that is all.’  And it seemed to me that the Prioress thought she was speaking very wisely, that she flattered herself on her wisdom, and rejoiced not a little in my discomfiture, visible on my face, for one cannot control the change of expression, ‘which gives one away,’ as the phrase goes.  She laughed, and we walked on together, I genuinely perplexed and pathetically anxious to discover if she had spoken the truth, fearing lest I might be adapting myself to a new part, not quite sure, hoping, however, that something new had come into my life.  On such occasions one peers into one’s heart, but however closely I peer it is impossible for me to say that the Prioress is right or that she was wrong.  Everybody will say she is right, of course, for it is so obvious that a prima donna who retires to a convent must think of the parts she has played, of her music, and the applause at the end of every evening, applause without which she could not live.  To say that no thought of my stage life ever crosses my mind would be to tell a lie that no one would believe; all thoughts