I'm sure--I'm positive now
that men think less of women who are ready to sacrifice themselves
than of women who wish to make slaves of them. I see that now. It's the
selfish women they admire, the women who take their own way and insist
on having all they want, not the women who love to serve them--not
slavishly, but out of love. A selfish woman they can understand; but a
woman who gives up something very precious to her they don't understand.
Maurice never understood my action in going to Africa. And you--I don't
believe you ever understood it. You must have wondered at my coming as
much as he did at my going. You were glad I came at the moment. Oh yes,
you were glad. I know that. But afterwards you must have wondered, you
did wonder. You thought it Quixotic, odd. You said to yourself, 'It was
just like Hermione. How could she do it? How could she come to me if she
really loved her husband?' And very likely my coming made you doubt
my really loving Maurice. I am almost sure it did. I don't believe all
these years you have ever understood what I felt about him, what his
death meant to me, what life meant to me afterwards. I told--I tried to
tell you in the cave--that day. But I don't think you really understood
at all. And he--he didn't understand my love for him. But I suppose he
didn't even want to. When I went away he simply forgot all about me.
That was it. I wasn't there, and he forgot. I wasn't there, and another
woman was there--and that was enough for him. And I dare say--now--it
is enough for most men, perhaps for every man. And then I'd made another
mistake. I was always making mistakes when my heart led me. And I'd
made a mistake in thinking that real people get beyond looks, the
outside--and that then life begins. They don't--at least real men don't.
A woman may spend her heart's blood for a man through years, and for
youthful charm and a face that is pretty, for the mere look in a pair of
eyes or the curve of a mouth, he'll almost forget that she's alive, even
when she's there before him. He'll take the other woman's part against
her instinctively, whichever is in the right. If both women do exactly
the same thing a man will find that the pretty woman has performed a
miracle and the ugly woman made some preposterous mistake. That is how
men are. That is how you are, I suppose, and that was Maurice, too. He
forgot me for a peasant. But--she must have been pretty once. And I was
always ugly!"

"Delarey loved