No person of Sanchia's acquaintance had suffered more
than he by her desperate affair. He had been her first lover, and her only
confidant, for she had been what one calls a "difficult" girl, who gave
out nothing and had no friends. Her sisters knew very little about her,
her mother nothing. It had been Senhouse who had called up the spirit that
was in her--that extraordinary candour of vision which shrank from the
judgment of nothing in heaven or earth "upon the merits." He had himself
been at first amazed by her quality; but before he had discovered it he
had adored her; so it had seemed all of a piece with her exquisite
perfection. That first sight he had had of her, in the sun-dappled
woodland glade, with her gown above her knees, setting her foot in the
unknown depths of a black pool--that she might rescue lilies from
suffocation--was surely typical of that which followed--when, barely
twenty-one, she trod deliberately, in her world's shocked face, a road
which leads without return to a point at which the world says, "I cannot
see you, you are dead." But she had never faltered, had seen no shame, and
felt none. Nevile was unhappy, and needed her. If there was no other way
of serving him, she must take that way.
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