It is the sole mercy
you can show. Never, for God's sake! speak of me to your brother or to
mine."
"Do you so mistrust Philip's affection?"
"No. It is because I trust it too entirely."
"Too entirely to do what?"
"To deal it fruitless pain. As you love him--as you pity me--pray that
he and I never meet!"
"But why? If all this could be cleared----"
"It never can be."
The baffled sense of impotence against the granite wall of some
immovable calamity which she had felt before came on her. She had been
always used to be obeyed, followed, and caressed; to see obstacles
crumble, difficulties disappear, before her wish; she had not been tried
by any sorrow, save when, a mere child still, she felt the pain of her
father's death; she had been lapped in softest luxury, crowned with
easiest victory. The sense that here there was a tragedy whose meaning
she could not reach, that there was here a fate that she could not
change or soften, brought a strange, unfamiliar feeling of weakness
before a hopeless and cruel doom that was no more to be altered by her
will than the huge, bare rocks of Africa, out yonder in the glare of
noon, were to be lifted by her hand. For she knew that this man, who
made so light of perils that would have chilled many to the soul in
terror, and who bore so quiet and serene a habit beneath the sharpest
stings and hardest blows of his adversities, would not speak thus
without full warrant; would not consign himself to this renunciation of
every hope, unless he were compelled to it by a destiny from which there
was no escape.
Pages:
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723