A flicker of retrospective victory passed across her face,
attesting old scores as paid. For there, through sleepless nights,
nursing the ardours and disgust of her young womanhood, she lay barren
beside her apple-cheeked, piping-voiced spouse, his wife in name only.
There later, times having, as by miracle, changed for her, she gave
birth to her son.
If somewhat pre-christian in instinct and in nature, the child of a more
ancient and a simpler world, she was in no sort slow of intelligence or
wanton. What had been, sufficed her. She cried out neither for further
indulgence of passion, nor against barriers imposed by circumstance and
class. That which she had done, she had done open-eyed, counting and
accepting the cost. Since then wooers were not lacking; but she turned a
deaf ear to all and each. A frank materialist in some ways, she proved an
idealist in this. No subsequent love passage could rival, in wonder or
beauty, that first one; since, compared with Charles Verity, the men who
subsequently aspired to her favours--whether in wedlock or out--were, to
her taste, at best dull, loutish fellows, at worst no more than human
jackasses or human swine.
Pages:
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852