She did not, during these
dreadful days, talk continuously; she had long periods of pale,
intensely anxious, watchful silence, interrupted by outbreaks of
passionate argument, entreaty, invocation. It was Verena who talked
incessantly, Verena who was in a state entirely new to her, and, as any
one could see, in an attitude entirely unnatural and overdone. If she
was deceiving herself, as Olive said, there was something very affecting
in her effort, her ingenuity. If she tried to appear to Olive impartial,
coldly judicious, in her attitude with regard to Basil Ransom, and only
anxious to see, for the moral satisfaction of the thing, how good a
case, as a lover, he might make out for himself and how much he might
touch her susceptibilities, she endeavoured, still more earnestly, to
practise this fraud upon her own imagination. She abounded in every
proof that she should be in despair if she should be overborne, and she
thought of arguments even more convincing, if possible, than Olive's,
why she should hold on to her old faith, why she should resist even at
the cost of acute temporary suffering. She was voluble, fluent,
feverish; she was perpetually bringing up the subject, as if to
encourage her friend, to show how she kept possession of her judgement,
how independent she remained.
No stranger situation can be imagined than that of these extraordinary
young women at this juncture; it was so singular on Verena's part, in
particular, that I despair of presenting it to the reader with the air
of reality.
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