her personal pride were not so
much at variance: perhaps because her buzzing head had no ideas. 'Tell
Emma you have undertaken to wash the blackamoor as white as she can be,'
she said perversely, in her spite at herself for not coming, as it were,
out of the dawn to the man she could consent to wed: and he replied: 'I
shall tell her my dark girl pleads for a fortnight's grace before she
and I set sail for the West coast of Ireland': conjuring a picture
that checked any protest against the shortness of time:--and Emma would
surely be his ally.

They talked of the Dublin Ball: painfully to some of her thoughts.
But Redworth kissed that distant brilliant night as freshly as if no
belabouring years rolled in the chasm: which led her to conceive partly,
and wonderingly, the nature of a strong man's passion; and it subjugated
the woman knowing of a contrast. The smart of the blow dealt her by him
who had fired the passion in her became a burning regret for the loss
of that fair fame she had sacrificed to him, and could not bring to her
truer lover: though it was but the outer view of herself--the world's
view; only she was generous and of honest conscience, and but for the
sake of her truer lover, she would mentally have allowed the world
to lash and abuse her, without a plea of material purity. Could it be
named? The naming of it in her clear mind lessened it to accidental:--By
good fortune, she was no worse!--She said to Redworth, when finally
dismissing him; 'I bring no real disgrace to you, my friend.'--To have
had this sharp spiritual battle at such a time, was proof of honest
conscience, rarer among women, as the world has fashioned them yet, than
the purity demanded of them.--His answer: 'You are my wife!' rang in her
hearing.

When she sat alone at last, she was incapable, despite her nature's
imaginative leap to brightness, of choosing any single period,
auspicious or luminous or flattering, since the hour of her first
meeting this man, rather than the grey light he cast on her, promising
helpfulness, and inspiring a belief in her capacity to help. Not the
Salvatore high raptures nor the nights of social applause could appear
preferable: she strained her shattered wits to try them. As for
her superlunary sphere, it was in fragments; and she mused on the
singularity, considering that she was not deeply enamoured. Was she
so at all? The question drove her to embrace the dignity of being
reasonable--under Emmy's guida