Something like that. Not the very words perhaps but such was the general
sense of her overwhelming argument--the argument of refuge.
I don't think she gave a thought to material conditions. But as part of
that argument set forth breathlessly, as if she were afraid that if she
stopped for a moment she could never go on again, she mentioned that
generosity of a stormy type, which had come to her from the sea, had
caught her up on the brink of unmentionable failure, had whirled her away
in its first ardent gust and could be trusted now, implicitly trusted, to
carry them both, side by side, into absolute safety.
She believed it, she affirmed it. He understood thoroughly at last, and
at once the interior of that cab, of an aspect so pacific in the eyes of
the people on the pavements, became the scene of a great agitation. The
generosity of Roderick Anthony--the son of the poet--affected the
ex-financier de Barral in a manner which must have brought home to Flora
de Barral the extreme arduousness of the business of being a woman. Being
a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of
dealings with men.
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