She was in a state, when she settled down in the
milliner's spare back room over the drug-store, where all the warmer
emotions seemed terrible to her. It was Rodney's love for her and hers
for him, that had bruised and lacerated her; that had made the winter
months a long torment, unmitigated during the last of them, by any form
of adequate self-expression. The two parodies on love which had been
thrust into her face just at the end, Olga Larson's inverted form of it
toward herself, and Dolly's shabby little romance, had given her an
absolute loathing for it. To her, in that condition, any expression of
friendship that was warm and soft, and in the least sentimental, would
have been almost unendurable to her. Miss Gibbons, in that acrid
antiseptic way of hers, simply washed her soul in cold water and clothed
it again in the garments of self-respect.
Her manner to Rose, even as their friendship ripened and grew more
confident, never changed. Nor did the manner Rose adopted toward her.
Their endless talks resulted in a good deal of self-revelation, but this
was never direct.
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