Strange I call the nature of her reflexions, for they
softly battled with each other as she listened, in the warm, still air,
touched with the far-away hum of the immense city, to his deep, sweet,
distinct voice, expressing monstrous opinions with exotic cadences and
mild, familiar laughs, which, as he leaned towards her, almost tickled
her cheek and ear. It seemed to her strangely harsh, almost cruel, to
have brought her out only to say to her things which, after all, free as
she was to contradict them and tolerant as she always tried to be, could
only give her pain; yet there was a spell upon her as she listened; it
was in her nature to be easily submissive, to like being overborne. She
could be silent when people insisted, and silent without acrimony. Her
whole relation to Olive was a kind of tacit, tender assent to passionate
insistence, and if this had ended by being easy and agreeable to her
(and indeed had never been anything else), it may be supposed that the
struggle of yielding to a will which she felt to be stronger even than
Olive's was not of long duration. Ransom's will had the effect of making
her linger even while she knew the afternoon was going on, that Olive
would have come back and found her still absent, and would have been
submerged again in the bitter waves of anxiety. She saw her, in fact, as
she must be at that moment, posted at the window of her room in Tenth
Street, watching for some sign of her return, listening for her step on
the staircase, her voice in the hall.
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