If she had feminine
dignity--that pure and sacred panoply which man ignores at his own proper
peril--it disappeared. The "poor old Fritz" feeling, which was the most
human, simple, happy thing in her heart, started into vivacity as she
realised the long legs flowing into air over the edge of the short sofa,
the pent-up fury--fury of the too large body on the too small
resting-place--which found a partial vent in the hallowed objurgation of
the British Philistine.
With every moment that she lay in the big bed she was punishing Fritz.
She nestled down among the pillows. She stretched out her limbs
luxuriously. How easy it was to punish a man! Lying there she recalled
her husband's words, each detail of his treatment of her since she had
spoken to Carey. He had called her "a damned shameful woman." That was of
all the worst offence. She told herself that she ought to, that she must,
for that expression alone, hate Fritz for ever. And then, immediately,
she knew that she had forgiven it already, without effort, without
thought.
She understood the type with which she had to deal, the absurd boyishness
that was linked with the brutality of it, the lack of mind to give words
their true, their inmost meaning. Words are instruments of torture, or
the pattering confetti of a carnival, not by themselves but by the mind
that sends them forth. Fritz's exclamation might have roused eternal
enmity in her if it had been uttered by another man.
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