And
now he was fulfilling in her child's life an office akin to hers in
his life.
The knowledge made her feel desolate, driven out. Yes, she felt as if
this secret shared by child and friend had expelled her from their
lives. Was that unreasonable? She wished to be reasonable, to be calm.
Calm? She thought of the old Oriental, and of his theory of
resignation. Surely it was not for her, that theory. She was of
different blood. She did not issue from the loins of the immutable
East. And yet how much better it was to be resigned, to sit enthroned
above the chances of life, to have conquered fate by absolute
submission to its decrees!
Why was her heart so youthful in her middle-aged body? Why did it
still instinctively clamor for sympathy, like a child's? Why could she
be so easily and so cruelly wounded? It was weak. It was contemptible.
She hated herself. But she could only be the thing she at that moment
hated.
Her surreptitious act of the afternoon seemed to have altered her
irrevocably, to have twisted her out of shape--yet she could not wish
it undone, the knowledge gained by it withheld.
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