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Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941

"The Captives"


For a moment she hesitated, then with shamefaced terror, slunk to
Maggie, pressed up against her, and sat there huddled, staring at
Grace with yellow unfriendly eyes.


CHAPTER IV
GRACE

Not in a day and not in a night did Maggie find a key to that
strange confusion of fears, superstitions, and self-satisfactions
that was known to the world as Grace Trenchard. Perhaps she never
found it, and through all the struggle and conflict in which she was
now to be involved she was fighting, desperately, in the dark. Fight
she did, and it was this same conflict, bitter and tragic enough at
the time, that transformed her into the woman that she became . . .
and through all that conflict it may be truly said of her that she
never knew a moment's bitterness--anger, dismay, loneliness, even
despair-bitterness never.
It was not strange that Maggie did not understand Grace; Grace never
understood herself nor did she make the slightest attempt to do so.
It would be easy enough to cover the ground at once by saying that
she had no imagination, that she never went behind the thing that
she saw, and that she found the grasping of external things quite as
much as she could manage.


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