She might lose it; youth
made light of the risk. She might crawl back in sad plight; the Prodigal
Son did not think of that when he set out. She found herself wishing she
had nothing, that she might be free to start on the search for anything.
Like Quisante? Why, yes, just like Quisante. Like that strange,
intolerable, vulgar, attractive, intermittently inspired creature, who
presented himself at life's roulette-table, not less various in his own
person than were the varying turns he courted, unaccountable as chance,
baffling as fate, changeable as luck. Indeed he was like life itself, a
thing you loved and hated, grew weary of and embraced, shrank from and
pursued. To see him then was in a way to look on at life, to be in
contact with him was to feel the throb of its movement. In her midnight
musings the man seemed somehow to cease to be odious because he ceased
to be individual, to be no longer incomprehensible because he was no
longer apart, because he became to her less himself and more the
expression and impersonation of an instinct that in her own blood ran
riot and held festivity.
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