She had always had _sic volo_ for her final cause. _Stet pro
ratione voluntas._ Marriage, even nominal marriage, with Nevile was the
accursed thing: none of it. And why? Because she chose it so.
This was very sublime. I sing, or Mr. Senhouse sings, a Goddess in her own
Right. That is to be observed, or we fail. Persons have existed, and do
yet exist, who are law unto themselves, deliberate choosers of their fate,
deliberate allies of Atropos with the shears, who go what seems to us,
shivering on the brink of things, a bright and bloodstained way, and
furrow deeply into life, because it must be so, because so they will have
it. Great ones of time, a Caesar or so, a Catherine, a Buonaparte, come
handily to mind, who, wreaking countless woes, wrought evenly their own.
And since greatness is a relative term, and time an abstraction of the
mind, in their company, says Mr. Senhouse, was Sanchia Percival, and in
her blue-clouded eyes was to be discerned seated, like a captain,
foreknowledge of her own fate, and will to choose it. But, as for Mr.
Senhouse himself, at this time of envisaging of ways I don't believe that
he entered her head. Small blame to her, either, seeing that the man,
having renounced her, or failed of her, as you please, had taken up with
his Mrs.
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