She had had her fling. Men repelled her. She
never meant to marry, even for substance. When the war was over she should
live the completely independent life. Nobody would care what economic
liberties a woman took in the new era. The war had liberalized the most
conservative old bunch of relatives a girl was ever inflicted with.
V
As Alexina sat huddled in her warm coat--the periwinkle blue to which she
was still faithful--her dark fine hair, hanging about her, a mantle in
itself, she recalled those days when she, too, had vibrated to that savage
lust for life; those days of concentrated egoism, of deep and powerful
passions whose existence she had only dimly begun to suspect after she
dismissed her husband.
What had held her back? She had had a no more fastidious inheritance than
most of those women, a no more cultivated intelligence, nor proud instinct
of selection, nor ingrained habit of self-control.
She had put it down at first to fastidiousness, possibly a still lurking
desire to be able to give all to one man; that hope of the complete mating
which no woman relinquishes until toothless, certainly not in the mere zone
of death.
She had concluded that it was neither of these, or at least that they had
but played a part, and alone would never have won. It was a furious
mental revolt at the terrific power of the body, the mind, frightened and
cornered, determined to dominate; a fierce delight in the battle raging
behind her serene and smiling mask to the accompaniment of that vulgar
blare of war where mind over matter was as powerless in the death throe as
incantations during an eruption of Vesuvius.
Pages:
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371