Human Nature was an ever opening book to
her these days, and she wondered what would happen to herself if any of
several men she liked were capable of making her love him, whipping up a
personal storm in those emotional gulfs which had slowly and inflexibly
intruded themselves upon her consciousness.
She had pondered long and deeply on this subject, particularly in the old
world where bonds seem looser to the mere observer whether they are or not,
and where life looks to the American the quintessence of romance....She
had concluded that the most satisfactory experience that could come to her
would be a mad love affair "in the air" with a man who possessed all the
requirements to induce it, but who would either be the unsuspecting object,
or, reciprocating, would continue to love her with the world between them.
For she shrank from the disillusionments of secret libertinage; she did
not, indeed, believe that love could survive it, although passion might for
a time. Passion was unthinkable to her without love, and when she recalled
the mean and sordid devices to which two of her friends were put to meet
their lovers she felt nothing but disgust for the whole drama of man and
woman.
Alexina had been reared on the soundest moral principles of church and
society, to say nothing of the law, but the norm at the wheel has often
laughed in her amiable way at church and society and law when circumstances
have conspired to help her.
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