Tears which she had not been
able to shed for her own broken hope came easily now for this long
vanished sorrow. Her mother! How pitifully bare lay the shortened
story of that smothered life. Desire's heart, so much stronger than
the heart of her who gave it birth, filled with a great tenderness.
She saw herself once more a little frightened child. She felt again
that sense of Presence in the room. And knew that, for a child's
sake, a gentle soul had not made haste to happiness.
For that gay scamp, her father, Desire had no tear. And no
condemnation. Her mother had loved him. Her gentleness had seen no
flaw. Lightly he had taken a woman to protect through life--to
neglect, as lightly, the little matter of living. Desire let his
picture slip unhindered from her mind.
There was relief, though, in the knowledge that she owed no duty
there--or here. The instinct which had always balked at kinship with
the strange old man who had held her youth in bondage had not been
the abnormal thing she once had feared it was. She had fought
through--but it was good to know that she had fought with Nature,
not against her. At least she could start upon her new life clean
and free. . . .
A pity, though, that life should lie like ashes on her lips!
CHAPTER XXXIX
Nevertheless, and despite the taste of ashes, one must live and take
one's morning bath. desire thought, not without pleasure, of the
pool beneath the tree. Wrapped in her blue kimona, her leaf-brown
hair braided tightly into a thick pigtail and both hands occupied
with towels and soap, she pushed back the tent flap and stepped out
into the green and gold of morning.
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