Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ She could clasp her hands. “No, no, no,” she repeated almost with joy.
“You lie. You are lying. What is the good of lying to me now? It is easy for you to lie. You went to ask him the truth, and he gave it to you. For he would never have loved me, whatever I may have hoped—even believed at moments.”
“No, Mary; no, no!” Mary’s dreadful supposition made Camelia feel the reality as a peace, a refuge. That world of black cruelty where Mary wandered, that at least was untrue, an illusion. Not hatred, not deceit surrounded her, but love, and pity, and tenderness. ”

“ But if you do love me—choose me, as you say; if I do love you—which I have not said—and will not say, will not say even to exculpate my folly of last night—even then, Camelia! I would not marry a woman whom I despise.”
“Despise?” she repeated. Her voice was a toneless echo of his. She weighed the word, and found it heavy, as he saw. Her eyes dwelt on his mutely, and there dawned slowly in them the terror of the eternal negative that rose between her and him.
“You are not good enough for me, Camelia,” said Perior. ”

“ An answering pang shot through Camelia’s heart—whether pain, pity, or triumph she could not have told; but she said quickly, her eyes rounded in unfamiliar solemnity, still on his—
“Breaking your heart?”
“I care for you,” said Perior; “I only ask for a mere cranny, where a friendly tenderness might find foothold—one ray of sincerity, of honor—to make me feel that my fondness for you is not a—a contemptible, a weakening folly. It’s as if you dashed me down on the rocks—just as I fancy I’ve found something to hold on by!” ”

“ She told him that her science was more logical than his, it had made her charitable to the whole world, herself included, whereas he was hard on the world and hard on himself. His very kindness lacked grace, while her unkindness wore a flower-like color. He was sorry for people, not fond of them—but Camelia was neither fond nor sorry. They were shadows woven into the web of her experience, her business was to make that experience pleasant, to see it beautifully. It was this love of beauty—beauty in the pagan sense—that baffled him in her. ”

“ She felt herself contemplating the sum of lies with an almost impersonal curiosity.
“Camelia!” The odd pitch of his voice, sharp with a sudden, uncontrollable emotion, made her look up.
He rose, paused, looking back at her. “You are breaking my heart,” he said. He had not intended to say it, nor known the truth that now came imperatively to his lips. How she had hurt him, after all! He felt that he was almost appealing to her, that indignation, scorn, hatred of her baseness, were as nothing compared with that appeal—not to hurt him; and he grew very white. ”

“ She looked up, lifting her face to his.
“To be fond of you, Camelia,” said Perior. “I can’t say more than that!”
“Because you won’t believe in me! Can’t believe in me! And I can’t live without you to help me! Haven’t you seen, all along, that you were the only one I cared about? Half my little naughtinesses were only to provoke you, to make you angry, to see that you cared enough to be angry. All the rest—the worldliness—the using of people—yes, yes, I own to it!—but no one was better than I! Why should I have been good when no one else is? ”

“ You will kiss her, love her, and she will die happy—with her hand in yours!” Her eyes sought his wildly. He had never loved her as he loved her now, and though his tears were for Mary, the power, the freedom of his love for Camelia was a joy to him even in the midst of a great sadness. He could not have kissed her or put his arms around her; the dignity of her abasement was part of the new, the sacred loveliness, and it was more in pity than in love that he took the poor, distraught, beautiful face between his hands and looked at her a negation, pitiful and inarticulate. ”

“ Hardly a thread bound her to life; even her passionate hatred of Camelia was dimmed by the creeping mists; even her love for Perior wailed, it seemed, at a long distance from her; she listened to it as she lay there; only at moments came a throb of pain for all the happiness she had never had. Camelia meeting the calm eyes would smile tremulously, but Mary gave no answering smile, and her eyes kept all their calm.
Camelia had to hold firmly to the self-abnegation of perfect self-control to keep down the cry of confession that would give her relief, that would perhaps admit her to Mary’s heart ”

“ Lady Paton sobbed out the sad facts. Her own blindness; poor Mary’s long concealment—too successful; the doctor’s fatal verdict.
“I was blind, too,” said Perior, “though I always feared it.”
“Ah! that is the cruellest part of it! And her indifference—she does not seem to care; she does not speak to any of us.”
“Not to Camelia? Is Camelia with her?”
Perior’s heart must spare some of its aching to his unhappy Camelia.
“She has not once left her. She is so brave; I can only cry; but it has made Camelia already different; a strength, a gentleness, yet a despair. ”

“ She stretched her clasped hands towards her cousin.
“I did not know; indeed, I did not! Indeed, I love you, Mary!—oh, I do love you! We all love you!” She felt herself struggling, with weak, desperate hands, against Mary’s awful fate and her own guilt. “How can you say that, when we all love you? know how good you are!—how sweet and good—love you for it!” She buried her face in her hands, sobbing. Mary, who herself no longer sobbed, observed her.
“Oh, you are a little sorry now,” she said, in a voice of cold impassiveness that froze Camelia’s sobs to instant silence. ”

“ Her white hair was smoothed thickly under the transparent cambrics of an exquisite cap, and framed the sweetness of a faded face, in profile like Camelia’s. Camelia’s eyes were her father’s, and her smile; Lady Paton’s eyes were round like a child’s, and her smile half-frightened, half-explanatory. With all the gentlewoman’s mild dignity, her look was timid, as though it besought indulgence for a lifelong sense of insignificance, a look that aroused in Perior his grimmest scorn for a world in which such flower-like moral loveliness is inevitably victimized by garish egotisms. ”

“ That is mean, despicable,” said Perior, planting his slashes very effectively.
“To laugh with you was like laughing to myself,” said Camelia, steadying her lips, and wondering vaguely if victory might not yet be wrested from this humiliation; his inflexible cruelty forced from her that half appeal. “It was merely thinking aloud, and to tell a few kindly little fibs—as every woman does, a hundred times a day—is not flattery.”
“To gain a person’s liking on false pretences is base; and I don’t care how many women do it—nor how often they do it. I shan’t argue with you, Camelia. ”

“ He saw that she would have laid down her life for him—or for Mary, as she stood there, and, for Mary, she expected an equal willingness on his side.
“It would only be an agony to her,” Camelia said; “she would fear every moment that she would betray herself to you, as she betrayed herself to me. Can’t you see that? Understand that?” Desperately she reiterated: “You must pretend! You must lie! You must tell her that you love her! You must marry her, take her away to some beautiful country—there are places where they live for years; make a paradise about her. ”

“ He recognized in her his own scorn for the world without his ideal, which would not permit him to stoop and use it; but, so Perior thought, Camelia knew no ideals; reality did not hurt her—she met it with its own weapons. One did not conquer an immoral world by moral methods; and if one lived in it, not to conquer it would be intolerable. The scorn no doubt excused her to herself, but it hedged her round with a sort of stupidity from which Perior’s quick recognition of moral beauty preserved him. Ethical worth had come to be everything to him. Camelia simply did not see it. ”

“ Camelia added, wrinkling up her nose in a self-mockery that robbed the coming remark of fatuity, “that I was a personage there.”
“As a noticeably pretty girl is a personage. You really are beating your drum rather deafeningly, Camelia.”
“Yes; I’ll shock you by mere noise. But, Alceste, I am not as conceited as I seem; no, really, I am not,” and with her change of tone her look became humorously grave. “I know very well that the people who make much of me—who think me a personage—are sillies. Still, in a world of sillies, I am a personage. It does come round to that, you see.” ”

“ Sir Arthur’s long breath escaped with the relief of recovered joy.
“Don’t be insincere;—dearest,” he added, looking at her; and seeing the surprise with which she received the grave, impulsive word, he went on quickly, yet gently.
“You know you often want to please people—to make every one like you;—even I have fancied it—forgive me, won’t you, at the price of a little falseness. When one feels as I do, the least flaw cuts into one like a knife.” With Camelia’s triumph there now mingled a bitter distaste; she could hardly bring herself to look into his honest, adoring eyes ”

“ Every one had gone. The guests to golf at the Havershams; Mary, Lady Paton, and Lady Henge for a long drive. They had all respected the sensitive requirements of her new position. She was to be left alone, and as Camelia walked from room to room, the big house was desolate.
She nourished a sense of resentment, of injury, for it seemed to thrust away the chilly stupor of fear, fear of that new presence walking with her, waiting for her recognition. The loneliness, the melancholy, to which she could only feign blindness, were almost unendurable. ”