here
being nothing else left for her now in life, as the vulgar-natured would
have supposed had they known her history; neither was it because, most
frequent accusation of the ignorant, it appealed to the sensuous side of
her. For ritual she cared as little as the Parson, and by preference she
always went to low Mass instead of to a high Mass. She had found
something that for her had been hitherto hidden, and Boase saw it and
was glad. It was noteworthy that it was to him and not to Ishmael she
spoke of it. Georgie, with all her dearness, was almost too prosperous
to understand. Judy radiated an inner joy that Ishmael had not attained
and that Georgie had never felt the need of. That joy had not been won
until her feet had trod stranger ways than her friends at Cloom ever
imagined. Often she was seized by a pang of conscience that they should
admire her as a creature above everything honest and courageous ... for
there was more to know of her now than her relation with Killigrew. She
knew how the single-heartedness of that had absolved her in their eyes;
but for what it had plunged her in they would have had less
comprehension. For it was not in a nature so essentially womanly as
Judith's to be content with sex-starvation once passion had been aroused
in her, and the irony of it all was that she, who had not for several
years awoken to stirred senses with the man she loved, was unable to
stifle their urgency after she had left him.

From slight dalliance with first one man and then another, she had
progressed to the greater intimacies, ashamed but unfighting. Till at
last the pricking thing had begun to grow fainter and her will stronger
and she was able to break away. She hid the truth and kept up the old
tradition of having loved only once, partly because it was true she had
not felt actual love again, but partly for vanity's sake....

It was not that she was vain of the romantic figure she seemed to her
friends; it was a more deadly thing than that. She was vain of the
quality of her past love. Too much had been made of it, and she would
have been more than human had she succeeded altogether in escaping the
temptation to visualise herself as the tragic survivor of a great
passion. And to this had she come, although her love had been so
real....

Ishmael never again during that visit felt quite the easy intimacy with
Judy that he had touched that day by the stream, though as the next few
years went on and her visit