FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168  
169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   >>   >|  
enough for him to feel that if he had suddenly taken me by the throat and strangled me slowly, _avec delices_, I could forgive him while I choked. How correct he was! But bitterness against me peeped out of every second phrase. At last I raised my hand and said to him, 'Enough.' I believe he was shocked by my plebeian abruptness but he was too polite to show it. His conventions will always stand in the way of his nature. I told him that everything that had been said and done during the last seven or eight months was inexplicable unless on the assumption that he was in love with me,--and yet in everything there was an implication that he couldn't forgive me my very existence. I did ask him whether he didn't think that it was absurd on his part . . . " "Didn't you say that it was exquisitely absurd?" I asked. "Exquisitely! . . . " Dona Rita was surprised at my question. "No. Why should I say that?" "It would have reconciled him to your abruptness. It's their family expression. It would have come with a familiar sound and would have been less offensive." "Offensive," Dona Rita repeated earnestly. "I don't think he was offended; he suffered in another way, but I didn't care for that. It was I that had become offended in the end, without spite, you understand, but past bearing. I didn't spare him. I told him plainly that to want a woman formed in mind and body, mistress of herself, free in her choice, independent in her thoughts; to love her apparently for what she is and at the same time to demand from her the candour and the innocence that could be only a shocking pretence; to know her such as life had made her and at the same time to despise her secretly for every touch with which her life had fashioned her--that was neither generous nor high minded; it was positively frantic. He got up and went away to lean against the mantelpiece, there, on his elbow and with his head in his hand. You have no idea of the charm and the distinction of his pose. I couldn't help admiring him: the expression, the grace, the fatal suggestion of his immobility. Oh, yes, I am sensible to aesthetic impressions, I have been educated to believe that there is a soul in them." With that enigmatic, under the eyebrows glance fixed on me she laughed her deep contralto laugh without mirth but also without irony, and profoundly moving by the mere purity of the sound. "I suspect he was never so disgusted and appalled in his
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168  
169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
absurd
 

expression

 

abruptness

 

forgive

 

offended

 
couldn
 
positively
 

frantic

 
minded
 

fashioned


generous

 

demand

 
candour
 

apparently

 
thoughts
 

choice

 
independent
 
innocence
 

despise

 

secretly


shocking

 

pretence

 

distinction

 

glance

 

laughed

 

contralto

 

eyebrows

 

enigmatic

 

suspect

 

disgusted


appalled

 
purity
 

profoundly

 

moving

 

educated

 
impressions
 

mantelpiece

 
mistress
 

aesthetic

 
immobility

suggestion
 

admiring

 
conventions
 
shocked
 

plebeian

 

polite

 
nature
 

inexplicable

 
assumption
 

months