ays felt; it remained like a mark on
her soul, a sort of mystic wound, to be contemplated, to be meditated
over. And she said further to Mrs. Fyne, in the course of many
confidences provoked by that contemplation, that, as long as that woman
called her names, it was almost soothing, it was in a manner reassuring.
Her imagination had, like her body, gone off in a wild bound to meet the
unknown; and then to hear after all something which more in its tone than
in its substance was mere venomous abuse, had steadied the inward flutter
of all her being.

"She called me a little fool more times than I can remember. I! A fool!
Why, Mrs. Fyne! I do assure you I had never yet thought at all; never of
anything in the world, till then. I just went on living. And one can't
be a fool without one has at least tried to think. But what had I ever
to think about?"

"And no doubt," commented Marlow, "her life had been a mere life of
sensations--the response to which can neither be foolish nor wise. It
can only be temperamental; and I believe that she was of a generally
happy disposition, a child of the average kind. Even when she was asked
violently whether she imagined that there was anything in her, apart from
her money, to induce any intelligent person to take any sort of interest
in her existence, she only caught her breath in one dry sob and said
nothing, made no other sound, made no movement. When she was viciously
assured that she was in heart, mind, manner and appearance, an utterly
common and insipid creature, she remained still, without indignation,
without anger. She stood, a frail and passive vessel into which the
other went on pouring all the accumulated dislike for all her pupils, her
scorn of all her employers (the ducal one included), the accumulated
resentment, the infinite hatred of all these unrelieved years of--I won't
say hypocrisy. The practice of perfect hypocrisy is a relief in itself,
a secret triumph of the vilest sort, no doubt, but still a way of getting
even with the common morality from which some of us appear to suffer so
much. No! I will say the years, the passionate, bitter years, of
restraint, the iron, admirably mannered restraint at every moment, in a
never-failing perfect correctness of speech, glances, movements, smiles,
gestures, establishing for her a high reputation, an impressive record of
success in her sphere. It had been like living half strangled for years.

And all this tortu