The face of the down showed the white scar of the quarry where not more
than sixteen hours before Fyne and I had been groping in the dark with
horrible apprehension of finding under our hands the shattered body of a
girl. For myself I had in addition the memory of my meeting with her.
She was certainly walking very near the edge--courting a sinister
solution. But, now, having by the most unexpected chance come upon a
man, she had found another way to escape from the world. Such world as
was open to her--without shelter, without bread, without honour. The
best she could have found in it would have been a precarious dole of pity
diminishing as her years increased. The appeal of the abandoned child
Flora to the sympathies of the Fynes had been irresistible. But now she
had become a woman, and Mrs. Fyne was presenting an implacable front to a
particularly feminine transaction. I may say triumphantly feminine. It
is true that Mrs. Fyne did not want women to be women. Her theory was
that they should turn themselves into unscrupulous sexless nuisances. An
offended theorist dwelt in her bosom somewhere.
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