He counted as dead for her all the high hopes
and the attractive imaginings with which Quisante once had fired her.
Dead for her they were at that moment; she could see nothing but her
husband's baseness and a baseness bred by it in herself; her bond to him
was an obligation to dishonour and a chain of treachery. She abandoned to
Marchmont's eyes all the hidden secrets of her misery; in this she seemed
also to display before him the dead body of her hopes, her interest, her
ambitions. Giving all, she had gained nothing; so her sobs said. But only
for moments does life seem so simple that a sob can cover all of it.
Presently she grew calmer. "I've never broken out like this before," she
said, "but it's rather bad to have to look forward to a life of it. And
it'll get worse, not better; or if it doesn't get worse it'll mean that
I'm getting worse, and that'll be worse than all." She smiled forlornly.
"What a tangle of 'worses' I've tied it up in, haven't I?"
She did not seem to be ashamed of her breaking-out, but rather to be
relieved by it, and to feel that it had helped to establish or renew an
intimacy in which she found some pleasure and some consolation; at least
there was one friend now who knew exactly how she stood and would not set
down to that own self of hers the actions that he might see her perform
in Quisante's service.
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