The hopeless passion ran like a corroding poison through the
inflammable tissue.
She had put the matter to the test, and found that truth of which
the mere possibility had been torture. He had absolutely rejected
her. "He could not care for me," she kept repeating, as the silent
air round her seemed full of his cold, short laughs.
His passion for her was dead. It had existed, surely--those looks
of his, the sudden violence of his touch when there was any excuse
for the slightest contact with her--or had it all been some curious
dream?
She could not tell now, but whether it had been or not, it was no
longer. To her that seemed the only explanation of his words and
tones. To the tender female nature the depth of brutality in the
passion of the male--that is, in fact, the very sign of it--remains
always an enigma.
After the scene just passed, it seemed to the girl impossible,
ludicrous, to suppose that Stephen loved her.
She had already made great allowance for him. She had a large share
of the gift of her sex--intuition; and she had understood more than
many women would have done, but to-night he had gone beyond the
limits of her imagination.
"No man would be so intensely unkind to a woman he cared for," she
argued. "For nothing, when there is no need."
She was not an unreasonable, nor selfish, nor silly girl.
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