Even then she believed that he could not have felt
quite so much alone as she did now; for men never long to be taken
care of as women do. And yet she was well, in this tranquil house
which was her own--with Vere, her child, and Gaspare, her devoted
servant.
As mentally she recounted her benefits, the strength there was in her
arose, protesting. She called herself harsh names: egoist, craven,
/faineant/. But it was no use to attack herself. In the deeps of her
poor, eager, passionate, hungry woman's nature something wept, and
needed, and could not be comforted, and could not be schooled. It
complained as one feeble, but really it must be strong; for it was
pitilessly persistent in its grieving. It had a strange endurance.
Life, the passing of the years, could not change it, could not still
it. Those eternal hungers of which Hermione had spoken to Artois--they
must have their meaning. Somewhere, surely, there are the happy
hunting-grounds, dreamed of by the red man--there are the Elysian
Fields where the souls that have longed and suffered will find the
ultimate peace.
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