him, and
then they would take up their old, happy, active, fruitful days again,
would throw themselves more than ever into their splendid effort. Olive
had seen how Verena was moved by Miss Birdseye's death, how at the sight
of that unique woman's majestically simple withdrawal from a scene in
which she had held every vulgar aspiration, every worldly standard and
lure, so cheap, the girl had been touched again with the spirit of their
most confident hours, had flamed up with the faith that no narrow
personal joy could compare in sweetness with the idea of doing something
for those who had always suffered and who waited still. This helped
Olive to believe that she might begin to count upon her again, conscious
as she was at the same time that Verena had been strangely weakened and
strained by her odious ordeal. Oh, Olive knew that she loved him--knew
what the passion was with which the wretched girl had to struggle; and
she did her the justice to believe that her professions were sincere,
her effort was real. Harassed and embittered as she was, Olive
Chancellor still proposed to herself to be rigidly just, and that is why
she pitied Verena now with an unspeakable pity, regarded her as the
victim of an atrocious spell, and reserved all her execration and
contempt for the author of their common misery. If Verena had stepped
into a boat with him half an hour after declaring that she would give
him his dismissal in twenty words, that was because he had ways, known
to himself and other men, of creating situations without an issue, of
forcing her to do things she could do only with sharp repugnance, under
the menace of pain that would be sharper still. But all the same, what
actually stared her in the face was that Verena was not to be trusted,
even after rallying again as passionately as she had done during the
days that followed Miss Birdseye's death. Olive would have liked to know
the pang of penance that _she_ would have been afraid, in her place, to
incur; to see the locked door which _she_ would not have managed to
force open!

This inexpressibly mournful sense that, after all, Verena, in her
exquisite delicacy and generosity, was appointed only to show how women
had from the beginning of time been the sport of men's selfishness and
avidity, this dismal conviction accompanied Olive on her walk, which
lasted all the afternoon, and in which she found a kind of tragic
relief. She went very far, keeping in the lonely places,