He saw me standing beside his
bed, defenceless, symbolic and forlorn, and all he found to say
was, 'Well, I am like that.'
I forgot myself in watching her. I had never seen anybody speak
with less play of facial muscles. In the fullness of its life her
face preserved a sort of immobility. The words seemed to form
themselves, fiery or pathetic, in the air, outside her lips. Their
design was hardly disturbed; a design of sweetness, gravity, and
force as if born from the inspiration of some artist; for I had
never seen anything to come up to it in nature before or since.
All this was part of the enchantment she cast over me; and I seemed
to notice that Mills had the aspect of a man under a spell. If he
too was a captive then I had no reason to feel ashamed of my
surrender.
"And you know," she began again abruptly, "that I have been
accustomed to all the forms of respect."
"That's true," murmured Mills, as if involuntarily.
"Well, yes," she reaffirmed. "My instinct may have told me that my
only protection was obscurity, but I didn't know how and where to
find it. Oh, yes, I had that instinct . . . But there were other
instincts and . . . How am I to tell you? I didn't know how to be
on guard against myself, either.
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