they are aware, within a few pounds, of what can
be done in London on five thousand--or ten thousand--a year. She
inevitably thought of herself as quite different from the girls of poor
or middle-class families, who must earn their living--Nora,
for instance.

And yet there was really a gulf between her and the ordinary worldling.
It consisted in little else than a double dose of personality--a richer
supply of nerve and emotion. She could not imagine life without money,
because she had always lived with rich people. But money was the mere
substratum; what really mattered was the excitement of loving, and being
loved. She had adored her parents with an absorbing affection. Then, as
she grew up, everywhere in her Roman life, among her girl friends, or
the handsome youths she remembered riding in the Villa Borghese
gymkhana, she began to be aware of passion and sex; she caught the hints
of them, as it were of a lightning playing through the web of life,
flashing, and then gone--illuminating or destroying. Her mind was full
of love stories. At twenty she had been the confidante of many, both
from her married and her unmarried friends. It was all, so far, a great
mystery to her. But there was in her a thrilled expectation. Not of a
love, tranquil and serene, such as shone on her parents' lives, but of
something overwhelming and tempestuous; into which she might fling her
life as one flings a flower into the current of Niagara.

It was the suggestion of such a possibility that had drawn her first to
Douglas Falloden. For three golden days she had imagined herself
blissfully in love with him. Then had come disillusion and repulsion.
What was violent and imperious in him had struck on what was violent and
imperious in her. She had begun to hold him off--to resist him. And that
resistance had been more exciting even than the docility of the first
phase. It had ended in his proposal, the snatched kiss, and a breach.
And now, she had little idea of what would happen; and would say to
herself, recklessly, that she did not care. Only she must see him--must
go on exploring him. And as for allowing her intimacy with him to
develop in any ordinary way--under the eyes of the Hoopers--or of
Oxford--it was not to be thought of. Rather than be tamely handed over
to him in a commonplace wooing, she would have broken off all connection
with him; and that she had not the strength to do.

* * * * *

"Here i