She remembered
the agony of those few minutes on the preceding day, when nothing
but what still seemed a miracle had saved him. At one moment she
felt herself inclined to pray that he might never come back. At
another, her heart ached to see him once more. She knew so well
that if he came it would be for her sake, that he would come to ask
her finally the question with which she had fenced. She knew, too,
that his coming would be the moment of her life. She was so much
of a woman, and the passionate craving of her sex to give love for
love was there in her heart, almost omnipotent. And in the
background there was that bitter desire to bring suffering upon
the man who had treated her like a child, who had placed her in a
false position with all other women, who had dawdled and idled
away his days, heedless of his duty, heedless of every serious
obligation. When she tried to reason, her way seemed so clear,
and yet, behind it all, there was that cold impulse of almost
Victorian prudishness, the inheritance of a long line of virtuous
women, a prudishness which she had once, when she had believed
that it was part of her second nature, scoffed at as being the
outcome of one of the finer forms of selfishness.
She told herself that she had come there to decide, and decision
came no nearer to her. A late afternoon star shone weakly in the
sky.
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