But
she was beautiful. She would always be beautiful. She might not think it,
but she was still a power, could still inspire love. In her blanched face
framed in white hair there was in truth a wonderful attraction.
Whiteness--Lady Holme shuddered when she thought of whiteness,
remembering what the glass had shown her.
Fritz--his animal passion for her--his horror of her now--Miss
Schley--their petty, concealed strife--Rupert Carey's love--Leo Ulford's
desire of conquest--his father's strange, pathetic devotion--Winter
falling at the feet of Spring--figures and events from the panorama of
her life now ended flickered through her almost numbed mind, while the
tears still ran down her face.
And Robin Pierce?
As she thought of him more life quickened in her mind.
Since her accident he had written to her several times, ardent, tender
letters, recalling all he had said to her, recounting again his adoration
of her for her nature, her soul, the essence of her, the woman in her,
telling her that this terror which had come upon her only made her dearer
to him, that--as she knew--he had impiously dared almost to long for it,
as for an order of release that would take effect in the liberation of
her true self.
These letters she had read, but they had not stirred her. She had told
herself that Robin did not know, that he was a self-deceiver, that he did
not understand his own nature, which was allied to the nature of every
living man.
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