ething like trying to talk
without singing in her own ears. The thought that is bound up with our
passion is as penetrative as air--everything is porous to it; bows,
smiles, conversation, repartee, are mere honeycombs where such thoughts
rushes freely, not always with a taste of honey. And without shutting
herself up in any solitude, Gwendolen seemed at the end of nine or ten
hours to have gone through a labyrinth of reflection, in which already
the same succession of prospects had been repeated, the same fallacious
outlets rejected, the same shrinking from the necessities of every
course. Already she was undergoing some hardening effect from feeling
that she was under eyes which saw her past actions solely in the light
of her lowest motives. She lived back in the scenes of her courtship,
with the new bitter consciousness of what had been in Grandcourt's
mind--certain now, with her present experience of him, that he had a
peculiar triumph in conquering her dumb repugnance, and that ever since
their marriage he had had a cold exultation in knowing her fancied
secret. Her imagination exaggerated every tyrannical impulse he was
capable of. "I will insist on being separated from him"--was her first
darting determination; then, "I will leave him whether he consents or
not. If this boy becomes his heir, I have made an atonement." But
neither in darkness nor in daylight could she imagine the scenes which
must carry out those determinations with the courage to feel them
endurable. How could she run away to her own family--carry distress
among them, and render herself an object of scandal in the society she
had left behind her? What future lay before her as Mrs. Grandcourt gone
back to her mother, who would be made destitute again by the rupture of
the marriage for which one chief excuse had been that it had brought
that mother a maintenance? She had lately been seeing her uncle and
Anna in London, and though she had been saved from any difficulty about
inviting them to stay in Grosvenor Square by their wish to be with Rex,
who would not risk a meeting with her, the transient visit she had had
from them helped now in giving stronger color to the picture of what it
would be for her to take refuge in her own family. What could she say
to justify her flight? Her uncle would tell her to go back. Her mother
would cry. Her aunt and Anna would look at her with wondering alarm.
Her husband would have power to compel her. She had absolutel