The nerves of the mouths of horses bore the whole
charge and answered it, as they do every day.
The woman in grey, quite alone, was immediately dependent on no nerves
but her own, which almost made her machine sensitive. But this alertness
was joined to such perfect composure as no flutter of a moment disturbed.
There was the steadiness of sleep, and a vigilance more than that of an
ordinary waking.
At the same time, the woman was doing what nothing in her youth could
well have prepared her for. She must have passed a childhood unlike the
ordinary girl's childhood, if her steadiness or her alertness had ever
been educated, if she had been rebuked for cowardice, for the egoistic
distrust of general rules, or for claims of exceptional chances. Yet
here she was, trusting not only herself but a multitude of other people;
taking her equal risk; giving a watchful confidence to averages--that
last, perhaps, her strangest and greatest success.
No exceptions were hers, no appeals, and no forewarnings. She evidently
had not in her mind a single phrase, familiar to women, made to express
no confidence except in accidents, and to proclaim a prudent foresight of
the less probable event.
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