Her reflections, as she lay in that bunk, her eyes half closed, were of
that primitive yet sagacious order which it seems impossible to transfer
to any authentic record. Her contact with reality was so immediate and
instinctive that to a modern and sophisticated masculine intellect like
Mr. Spokesly, or Mr. Dainopoulos even, she appeared crafty and deep. As
when she locked the door. She had not imagined Mr. Spokesly returning.
The whole complex network of emotions which he had predicated in her,
modesty, fear, panic, and coquetry, had not even entered her head. She
had formidable weapons, and behind these she remained busy with her own
affairs. So, too, when she had given everything she might possibly
inherit to her benefactress, she saw instantly the immediate and future
advantages of such a course. She could always come back, when the
detestable French had gone away home, and live with her friend again.
She knew that old Boris better than he knew himself. She knew that he
would do anything for his wife. Also she knew him for one of those men
who stood highest in her own esteem--men who made money. For men who did
not make money, who were preoccupied mainly with women, or books, or
even politics, she had no use. She did not like Mr. Dainopoulos
personally because he saw through her chief weakness, which was a
species of theatricality. She had a trick of imagining herself one of
the heroines of the cinemas she had seen; and this, since she could not
read and was unable to correct her sharp visual impressions by the great
traditions of art, appeared to be no more than a feminine whim. It was
more than that. It was herself she was expressing at these moments of
mummery. She had those emotions which are most easily depicted by
grandiose gestures and sudden animal movements. It was her language, the
language in which she could think with ease and celerity, compared with
which the cooerdinated sounds which were called words were no more to her
than the metal tokens called money. So there was nothing extraordinary
in her quick grasp of the situation which demanded a mouse-like
seclusion for a while. She lay still, even when footsteps clattering
down the ladder were obliterated by the spluttering whoop of the
whistle. And then came a novel and all-embracing sense of change, a
mysterious and minute vibration which becomes apparent to a person
situated well forward in a vessel beginning to move under her own power.
Ah! the _mach