Ricardo now looked at her calm face with something like respect. He was
even a little awed by her stillness, by her economy of words. Womanlike,
she felt the effect she had produced, the effect of knowing much and of
keeping all her knowledge in reserve. So far, somehow, this had come,
about of itself. Thus encouraged, directed in the way of duplicity, the
refuge of the weak, she made a heroically conscious effort and forced
her stiff, cold lips into a smile.
Duplicity--the refuge of the weak and the cowardly, but of the disarmed,
too! Nothing stood between the enchanted dream of her existence and
a cruel catastrophe but her duplicity. It seemed to her that the man
sitting there before her was an unavoidable presence, which had attended
all her life. He was the embodied evil of the world. She was not ashamed
of her duplicity. With a woman's frank courage, as soon as she saw
that opening she threw herself into it without reserve, with only one
doubt--that of her own strength. She was appalled by the situation; but
already all her aroused femininity, understanding that whether Heyst
loved her or not she loved him, and feeling that she had brought this on
his head, faced the danger with a passionate desire to defend her own.
CHAPTER THREE
To Ricardo the girl had been so unforeseen that he was unable to bring
upon her the light of his critical faculties.
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