"She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape!" (Joyce). The sudden of this quotation, and its transient fear, is readily apparent. Evelyn is not acting so much as reacting to this memory, and the "terror" it brings her. This quotation is demonstrative of the fright she feels due to her faint-heartedness. She cannot act but react, and it is this same inability to act due to fear (initially induced by her father) that drives her emotions and her behavior.

At the end of the story, Eveline's faint-heartedness causes another spasm of terror that prevents her from escaping her life in Europe and pursuing a better one with her sailor in South America. She is afraid of the unknown, and is afraid of leaving the only life that she has known -- regardless of how little she likes it or how debilitating an effect it produces...
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