She neither ate nor
slept; she could scarcely speak without bursting into tears; she felt so
implacably, insidiously baffled. She remembered the magnanimity with
which she had declined (the winter before the last) to receive the vow
of eternal maidenhood which she had at first demanded and then put by as
too crude a test, but which Verena, for a precious hour, for ever flown,
would _then_ have been willing to take. She repented of it with
bitterness and rage; and then she asked herself, more desperately still,
whether even if she held that pledge she should be brave enough to
enforce it in the face of actual complications. She believed that if it
were in her power to say, "No, I won't let you off; I have your solemn
word, and I won't!" Verena would bow to that decree and remain with her;
but the magic would have passed out of her spirit for ever, the
sweetness out of their friendship, the efficacy out of their work. She
said to her again and again that she had utterly changed since that hour
she came to her, in New York, after her morning with Mr. Ransom, and
sobbed out that they must hurry away. Then she had been wounded,
outraged, sickened, and in the interval nothing had happened, nothing
but that one exchange of letters, which she knew about, to bring her
round to a shameless tolerance. Shameless Verena admitted it to be; she
assented over and over to this proposition, and explained, as eagerly
each time as if it were the first, what it was that had come to pass,
what it was that had brought her round.
Pages:
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217