Pride burned in her
like a fire that cruelly illumines night, shining upon the destruction
it is compassing.
The terrible sense of outrage that gripped her soul and body--her body
because Vere was bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh--seemed to be
forcibly changing her nature, as cruel hands, prompted by murder in a
heart, change form, change beauty in the effort to destroy.
That evening Hermione felt herself being literally defaced by this
sensation of outrage within her, a sensation which she was powerless
to expel.
She found herself praying to God that Artois might not come to the
island that night. And yet, while she prayed, she felt that he was
coming.
She dined with Vere, in almost complete silence--trying to love this
dear child as she had always loved her, even in certain evil moments
of an irresistible jealousy. But she felt immensely far from Vere,
distant from her as one who does not love from one who loves; yet
hideously near, too, like one caught in the tangle of an enforced
intimacy rooted in a past which the present denies and rejects.
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