But Beatrice went her way undeterred. From Stafford's bungalow she
drove to the Travers'. The place was little more than an ill-cared-for
shanty, the garden overgrown with weeds, the rooms damp, ill-aired and
badly furnished, its reputation for misfortune phenomenal. Travers had
taken it as the only bungalow to be had for such a short period as he
intended to stay in Marut, and Lois had made no objection. Her energy
and determined striving after everything that was graceful and
beautiful was systematically crushed out of sight. She never
protested, never laid any difficulties in Travers' path. She seemed to
shrink into herself and live an invisible life of her own, leaving him
to go his way. She could not help him. She could build up nothing on a
character whose foundations were of shifting sand.
And never had she been more fully convinced of her own powerlessness
and of his absolute independence than after their brief and stormy
interview before Stafford's entry. She had felt how for a moment their
two diametrically opposed natures had faced each other. She had felt a
brief joyful satisfaction in at last coming to a hand-to-hand struggle
with him; but then, as usual, with a smile and an easy word he had
eluded her. So it had always been--so it would always be. Too late she
realized that she had thrown away her life upon a man who had no need
of her devotion. Too late she realized that all sacrifices are wasted
unless the ennobling of the sacrificer's character be considered.
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