" She had no coquetry. If she had,
pride would have forbidden her to use it. Her ideals were intensely
old-fashioned. She wanted to be pursued, won. The man must do it all. Her
writings had never been in the least romantic. Well, she was, if romance
meant having certain fixed ideals.
One thing puzzled her. When she wrote she manipulated her men and women in
their mutual relations with a master-hand. But she had not the least idea
how to manage her own affair. What was genius? A rotten spot in the brain,
a displacement of particles that operated independently of personality, of
the inherited ego? Possession? Ancestors come to life for an hour in the
subliminal depths? But what did she care for genius anyhow!
One thing she would have been willing to do as her part, aside from meeting
him mentally at all points and showing a brisk frank pleasure in his
society: give him every chance to woo and win her, to find her more and
more indispensable to his happiness. But she was no woman of leisure. She
could not receive him in charming toilettes in an equally seductive room.
She had nothing for evening wear but an old black satin gown. After her
arrival in London she had found time to buy a smart enough tailored coat
and skirt, and a hat, but nothing more.
And after the Armistice was declared she only saw him once.
Then came his abrupt departure for Paris. His noncommittal note.
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