My heart was beating so hard that at each beat a loose brass knob on the bedstead rattled.
Fortunately for me, my friend saw that something was seriously wrong and she sent for my family, who fetched me away.
They were exceedingly suspicious.
The Warden was exceedingly uncomfortable, but no one could prove anything, so nothing was said.
My mind was a blank.
I was thoroughly cowed and very exhausted, and my one desire was to get away.
I did not recover, however, as had been expected.
The intensity of the symptoms wore off, but I continued to be exceedingly easily tired, as if I had been drained of all vitality.
I knew that, somewhere at the back of my mind, was hidden the memory of a terrible experience, and I dared not think of it, because if I did, the shock and strain would be so severe that my mind would give way altogether.
My chief consolation was an old school arithmetic book, and I used to spend hour upon hour doing simple sums to keep my mind from racing itself to pieces in wondering what had been done to me and sidling up towards the memory, and then shying away from it like a frightened horse.
Finally I gained some measure of peace by coming to the conclusion that I had simply had a breakdown from overwork, and that the whole queer transaction was the fruit of my imagination.
And yet there was a lingering feeling that it was real and this feeling would not let me rest.
About a year after the incident, my health still being very poor, I went away to the country to recuperate, and there came across a friend who had been on the spot at the time of my breakdown.
It had apparently caused a good deal of talk, and I found here one who was not inclined to explain away my experience, but asked pertinent questions.
Another new friend became interested in my case and haled me off to the family doctor, who bluntly gave it as his opinion that I had been hypnotised.
It was before the days of psycho therapy, and his ministrations to a mind diseased were limited to patting me on the back and giving me a tonic and bromide.
The tonic was useful, but the bromide was not, as it lowered my powers of resistance, and I speedily discarded it, preferring to put up with my discomfort rather than to render myself defenceless.
For all the time I was obsessed by the fear that this strange force, which had been applied to me so effectually, would be applied again.
But although I feared this mysterious power, which I now realised was abroad in the world, I cannot tell what a relief it was to me to find that the whole transaction was not an hallucination, but an actual fact that one could rise up and cope with.
I obtained my release from the bondage of this fear by facing the whole situation and determining to find out exactly what had been done to me and how I could protect myself against a repetition of the experience.
It was an exceedingly unpleasant process, in fact the reaction caused by recovering the lost memories was only a little less violent than the original one; but I finally succeeded in freeing myself from my hag-ridden condition of fear, although it was a very long time before my physical health became normal.
My body was like an electric battery that has been completely discharged.
It took a long time to charge up again, and every time it was used before the charging was completed, it ran down again rapidly.
For a long time I had no reserves of energy, and after the least exertion would fall into a dead sleep at any hour of the day.
In the language of occultism, the etheric double had been damaged, and leaked prana.
It did not become normal until I took initiation into the occult order in which I subsequently trained.
The ritual admission of an individual into esoteric knowledge or a sacred order through a formal rite of passage — testing, ordeal, or ceremony — marking a definite before/after threshold in the initiate's status and access. Distinct from hidden_sayings (the doctrine being concealed, not the rite of admission to it) and esoteric_lineage (the historical chain of transmission across generations, not a single individual's admission).
The narrator states her health did not become normal until she took initiation into an occult order where she subsequently trained.
The doctrine and practice of one person deliberately inflicting harm on another through trained will, mind-power, or occult technique alone, without physical contact — producing exhaustion, illness, breakdown, or death in the victim; recognised cross-culturally as witchcraft, hexing, or the evil eye, and treated in Western esotericism as a genuine occult hazard requiring diagnosis and defence rather than dismissed as superstition. Distinct from magical_will (the general doctrine that trained volition has causal power, of which this is one malevolent application) and from spirit_conjuration (which subordinates an already-existing summoned spirit, rather than directing the operator's own power at a person).
The passage describes a deliberate application of a 'strange force' that caused physical and mental breakdown, exhaustion, and fear of repetition, which the author identifies as an actual fact requiring defence.
Organized, persisting groups — fraternities, orders, lodges — that maintain esoteric knowledge or practices as an institution distinct from public religion or mainstream society, holding 'the keys' collectively rather than through any one master-disciple pair. Distinct from esoteric_lineage (a genealogical chain of individual transmission, not an institution) and hidden_sayings (the concealment of a teaching's meaning, independent of whether any organized body holds it).
The reference to joining an 'occult order' implies membership in an organized group maintaining esoteric knowledge distinct from public society.