Perhaps what at each moment had angered her most was the fact that
she was speaking, not he. She knew him to be of the blood of
silent men and to have inherited their silence. This very trait of
his had rendered association with him so endearing. Love had been
so divinely apart from speech, either his or her own: most intimate
for having been most mute. But she knew also that he was capable
of speech, full and strong and quick enough upon occasion; and her
heart had cried out that in a lifetime this was the one hour when
he should not have given way to her or allowed her to say a
word--when he should have borne her down with uncontrollable
pleading.
It was her own work that confronted her and she did not recognize
it. She had exhausted resources to convince him of her
determination to cast him off at once; to render it plain that
further parley would to her be further insult. She had made him
feel this on the night of his confession; in the note of direct
repulse she sent him by the hand of a servant in her own house the
following afternoon; by returning to him everything that he had
ever given her; by her refusal to acknowledge his presence this
evening beyond laying upon him a command; and by every word that
she had just spoken. And in all this she had thought only of what
she suffered, not of what he must be suffering.
Perhaps some late instantaneous recognition of this flashed upon
her as she started to leave him--as she looked at him sitting
there, his face turned toward her in stoical acceptance of his
fate.
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