Zenobia's Drawing-Room

The remainder of the day, so far as I was concerned, was spent in
meditating on these recent incidents. I contrived, and alternately
rejected, innumerable methods of accounting for the presence of Zenobia
and Priscilla, and the connection of Westervelt with both. It must be
owned, too, that I had a keen, revengeful sense of the insult inflicted
by Zenobia's scornful recognition, and more particularly by her letting
down the curtain; as if such were the proper barrier to be interposed
between a character like hers and a perceptive faculty like mine.

For, was mine a mere vulgar curiosity? Zenobia should have known me better
than to suppose it. She should have been able to appreciate that
quality of the intellect and the heart which impelled me (often against
my own will, and to the detriment of my own comfort) to live in other
lives, and to endeavor--by generous sympathies, by delicate intuitions,
by taking note of things too slight for record, and by bringing my
human spirit into manifold accordance with the companions whom God
assigned me--to learn the secret which was hidden even from themselves.

Of all possible observers, methought a woman like Zenobia and a man
like Hollingsworth should have selected me. And now when the event has
long been past, I retain the same opinion of my fitness for the office.
True, I might have condemned them. Had I been judge as well as
witness, my sentence might have been stern as that of destiny itself.