It
seems a pleasure common enough with some girls, but I never had it; lads of
my own age were debarred when I was a girl. I had neither girls nor boys to
play with. Girl friends were dealt out to me to fit my supposed needs, but
taken that way as medicine I didn't find them very interesting. If I clung
to one more than another, that one was not asked soon again for fear of
inordinate affections and unbalanced enthusiasms. I was to be an all-around
young woman; so they built a wall all around me. It fitted tight at last,
and then I broke through one night and emptied my heart on the ground. My
plea, you see, is always ready. Could I have lived and kept on scorning
myself as I did that night? Do you remember?" She bent her imperative,
clears gaze upon Thorne. "I told you the truth when you gave me a chance
to lie. Heaven knows what it cost to say, 'I came with him of my own free
will!'"
Mrs. Thorne put her hand in her husband's. He pressed it absently, with his
eyes on the ground.
"It is such a mercy that I need not begin at the beginning. You know the
worst already, and your divine hesitation before judgment almost demands
that I should try to justify it.
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