Observing Adela as she slumbered, the gentle labour of her breath, her precious copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray on the table at her bedside, and then the totality of this lavishly decorated room, Emma pictured the cosseted life of indulgence and merriment her patient had led and recalled her stories of the pre-Raphaelite circle’s gatherings at Babbacombe Cliff. She could almost hear her talk of those rarefied ideas – mystical, complex, esoteric – that Emma doubted Adela had ever truly comprehended. Adela seemed to Emma the type to dally at the edges of knowing, there just for the fun of it, and, above all, for the difference from all she had grown up with in the Victorian era. She decided the only thing Adela really ever knew about the Theosophical Society was that it existed and was po
