And
what was she, standing there? A negatively virtuous young woman,
without enough desire of any kind to impel her to trample over
feelings, creeds and codes. If she died that moment, it would be said
of her that she was beautiful, and that was all. Reginald, with his
greed, his heartlessness, his indifference to all that did not serve
him, would not be forgotten: people would sigh and smile at the
mention of his name, hate him and wish him back. She envied him; she
wished she could feel in swift, passionate gusts as he had done, with
the force and the forgetfulness of a passing wind. His life, flecked
with disgrace, must also have been rich with temporary but memorable
beauty. The exterior of her own was all beauty, of person and
surroundings, but within there seemed to be only a cold waste.
She had been tempted the other afternoon, and she had resisted with
what seemed to her a despicable ease: she had not really cared, and
she felt that the necessity to struggle, even the collapse of her
resistance, would have argued better for her than her self-possession.
And for a moment she wished she had married Francis Sales. She would
at least have had some definite work in the world; she could have kept
him to his farming, as Mrs. Sales had set herself to do; she would
have had a home to see to and daily interviews with the cook! She
laughed at this decline in her ambition; she no longer expected the
advent of the colossal figure of her young dreams; and she knew this
was the hour when she ought to strike out a new way for herself, to
leave this place which offered her nothing but ease and a continuous,
foredoomed effort after enjoyment; but she also knew that she would
not go.
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