So to the last he would go to her and hold her in his arms sometimes,
before his strength was all gone. The terrible white, destructive light
that burned in her eyes only excited and roused him. Till he was bled
to death, and then he dreaded her more than anything. But he always
said to himself, how happy he had been, how he had loved her with a
pure and consuming love ever since he had known her. And he thought of
her as pure, chaste; the white flame which was known to him alone, the
flame of her sex, was a white flower of snow to his mind. She was a
wonderful white snow-flower, which he had desired infinitely. And now
he was dying with all his ideas and interpretations intact. They would
only collapse when the breath left his body. Till then they would be
pure truths for him. Only death would show the perfect completeness of
the lie. Till death, she was his white snow-flower. He had subdued her,
and her subjugation was to him an infinite chastity in her, a virginity
which he could never break, and which dominated him as by a spell.

She had let go the outer world, but within herself she was unbroken and
unimpaired. She only sat in her room like a moping, dishevelled hawk,
motionless, mindless. Her children, for whom she had been so fierce in
her youth, now meant scarcely anything to her. She had lost all that,
she was quite by herself. Only Gerald, the gleaming, had some existence
for her. But of late years, since he had become head of the business,
he too was forgotten. Whereas the father, now he was dying, turned for
compassion to Gerald. There had always been opposition between the two
of them. Gerald had feared and despised his father, and to a great
extent had avoided him all through boyhood and young manhood. And the
father had felt very often a real dislike of his eldest son, which,
never wanting to give way to, he had refused to acknowledge. He had
ignored Gerald as much as possible, leaving him alone.

Since, however, Gerald had come home and assumed responsibility in the
firm, and had proved such a wonderful director, the father, tired and
weary of all outside concerns, had put all his trust of these things in
his son, implicitly, leaving everything to him, and assuming a rather
touching dependence on the young enemy. This immediately roused a
poignant pity and allegiance in Gerald's heart, always shadowed by
contempt and by unadmitted enmity. For Gerald was in reaction against
Charity; and yet he was domina