No: her wedding night should not be here. Keen in his sympathy with
women, Hamilton knew how often that night recurs to a woman's
thoughts, and should its memories always bring back to her this
loathsome shed, these hideous sounds?
A repulsion so great filled him that it swept back his desire for
the moment. A great eagerness to get her away unharmed, unsoiled
from such a place, filled him. Already she seemed to be part of
himself, to be a possession he must guard. His heart was empty and
hungry: by means of her beauty and this strange unexpected
innocence she had so suddenly revealed to him, she had leapt into
it, made it her own. He sat down on the mean, dingy bed, and drew
her warm, supple body into his arms: she stood within their circle
submissively, quivering with pleasure. His touch was very gentle
and reverent, for he was a man who knew the value of essentials;
his brain was keen enough to go down to them and judge of them,
undeterred and unhindered and undeceived by externals, by
fictitious emblems. He saw here that he was in the presence of a
tender, youthful, unformed mind of complete innocence, and the
abhorrent surroundings affected that essential not at all.
A married woman in his own rank, with her dozen lovers and her
knowledge of evil, high in the favour of the world, could never
have had from him the same reverence that he gave to this
dancing-girl of the Deccan, who in the world's eyes was but a
creature put under his feet for him to trample on.
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