Miss Chancellor was historic and philosophic; or, at any rate, she
appeared so to Verena, who felt that through such an association one
might at last intellectually command all life. And there was a simpler
impulse; Verena wished to please her if only because she had such a
dread of displeasing her. Olive's displeasures, disappointments,
disapprovals were tragic, truly memorable; she grew white under them,
not shedding many tears, as a general thing, like inferior women (she
cried when she was angry, not when she was hurt), but limping and
panting, morally, as if she had received a wound that she would carry
for life. On the other hand, her commendations, her satisfactions were
as soft as a west wind; and she had this sign, the rarest of all, of
generosity, that she liked obligations of gratitude when they were not
laid upon her by men. Then, indeed, she scarcely recognised them. She
considered men in general as so much in the debt of the opposite sex
that any individual woman had an unlimited credit with them; she could
not possibly overdraw the general feminine account. The unexpected
temperance of her speech on this subject of Verena's accessibility to
matrimonial error seemed to the girl to have an antique beauty, a wisdom
purged of worldly elements; it reminded her of qualities that she
believed to have been proper to Electra or Antigone.
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