The Well of Loneliness

As though drawn there by some strong natal instinct, Stephen went straight to her father's study; and she sat in the old armchair that had survived him; then she buried her face in her hands.

All the loneliness that had gone before was as nothing to this new loneliness of spirit. An immense desolation swept down upon her, an immense need to cry out and claim understanding for herself, an immense need to find an answer to the riddle of her unwanted being. All around her were grey and crumbling ruins, and under those ruins her love lay bleeding; shamefully wounded by Angela Crossby, shamefully soiled and defiled by her mother -- a piteous, suffering, defenceless thing, it lay bleeding under the ruins.