E. Temple Thurston

“ At last Sally had left the court. She could bear the strain of it no longer.
The thoughts which that incident had given rise to in her mind, had thrown their shadows upon all her lightness of heart for many days afterwards. There she had seen the keen acid of implacable justice separating, with undeviating precision, the dross from the gold. She had beheld the naked fact of adultery—stripped of all the silk of glamour, all the velvet of romance which once it had worn—held in its cringing shame before the unsympathetic eyes of twelve men in a public court of law. ”

“ Sally rose to her feet and crossed to the mantelpiece. The spirit in her prompted her to considered lethargy, as though the remark were as inconsequent to her as it had been to the maker; but the gentleness of her nature made it impossible for her to give insult for insult. Her steps were not slow—they were almost eager—and her lips smiled. She gave the very impression that she would have died rather than create—the apparent sense of pleasure in which she felt in being addressed at all.
For a moment she stood looking into the impassive, brutal face of James Brownrigg. ”

“ The generalship of a woman is never so keen, so instinct with strategy, as when she gives battle against another of her sex. Her campaign against men, when once she takes up arms, is mimic warfare—a sham fight—compared to this. Against a man, she needs but a company of fascinations, and in one attack his squares—the stern veterans of determination—are driven to flight. But with a woman, whole regiments of cunning, whole battalions of craft, with all the well-trained scouts of intuition and all the dashing cavalries of charm, are needed to rout her absolutely from the field. ”

“ To Sally, such reasoning as this would have robbed her of all romance—the shattering siege gun that thunders through a town, and tumbles the images from their altars in the little church.
Two ways there were in which to view the matter truly. If she were the great woman, she would have loved for the love of love itself—let it end where it might. If she were the revolutionary seeking truth, demanding freedom, then she would have loved the transaction for the transaction's sake—let it end to-morrow if it willed. ”

“ There is very seldom a hand-to-hand encounter. Only your French Revolutions and your Russian Massacres mark the spots where the two armies have met, where blood has flowed like wine from the broken goblets of some thousands of lives. But usually it is the forced marches, with the enemy ever retreating over its own ground. And in this position of women, it is the army of Nature that has begun to move. Not the mere rising of a rebellious faction, but the entire unconquerable force of humanity whose whole existence is threatened by the invading power of population. ”

“ This, then, is Miss Hallard—adventuress in a great philosophy. Her thin lips, her shifting, disconcerting eyes, set deep beneath the brows; the long and narrow face, the high forehead on which the hair hangs heavily; that thin, reedy body, that ill-formed, unnatural breast which never was meant to suckle a child or nurse the drooping of a man's head—all these are the signs of her calling. A woman—by the irony of a fate that has thwarted the original design of Nature.
Sally Bishop is a woman before everything. Miss Hallard is a woman last of all. ”

“ In the doorway itself, at the top of the precipitous flight of stairs that led immediately to the room below, stood Madame, the proprietor's wife—ready to welcome all who came. Her round, French, good-natured face beamed when she saw Traill, and her little brown eyes gleamed with genuine approval as they swept over Sally.
"Bon soir, Monsieur; bon soir, Madame."
Every lady is Madame, however many during the week Monsieur may choose to bring, and she makes a romance of every single one of them. Her own days are memories, but, being French, she still lives in the romance of others. ”

“ But last and most poignant of all in the bitterness of this lesson that she had learnt, was her understanding of the place she held in the eyes of such men as Devenish. With those who knew of her life, no friendship was possible. One relationship, one only could exist—a relationship, at the thought of which her whole nature shuddered in violent disgust.
Janet was right. Janet had seen things from their proper point of view. As a trade she should have looked at it. As the leaving of one master to labour in the service of another she should have weighed its issue. ”

“ You are never to know how deep the iron has entered your soul until Fate begins to draw it out.
When Traill had left her, Sally's mind had been numbed with misery. The despair of such loneliness as hers is often a narcotic, that drugs all power of thought. In the beating of her pulses, when she had first heard Devenish's footsteps mounting the stairs, she was forced to the realization that hope was not yet dead in the heart of her. That undoubtedly was why, despite all Janet's efforts, she had refused to leave her rooms. ”

“ When once she became conscious again of her bodily existence, felt the pulses throbbing in her forehead, and knew that her heart was beating like the muffled rattling of a kettledrum, she shuddered. Traill, she knew, had nothing to do with it. If that thought, with the force of conviction behind it, had entered her mind, she would have fled; driven with the curling lash of fear—fear of life itself, fear of everything. But she did not even contemplate it. It was the woman her instinct mistrusted. She had realized her an enemy before ”

“ Here, too, she judged again by the lowest of standards, if judgment it can be said of a wild flinging of thoughts—vitriol hurled in a moment of madness. Yet against him she could find no bitterness. The woman, kissing the hand that strikes her, to shield it from the falling of the law, is a type that has made no history; but in the hearts of men she is to be found with her ineffaceable record.
It was against the two women, against Mrs. Durlacher with her damnable cunning, against the other with her still more damnable fascination, that all the blinding acid of Sally's thoughts was cast. ”

“ In that night was sown the seed of the new idea in her mind, which neither the wild passion of her love for Traill, nor all the stern preaching of Janet's philosophy had caused to take root before. A child—she knew that now—a child would save her. A child would make this life of hers worth while. And, having none, she set her heart, as you set a lure with cunning hands, to win the love of little Maurice Priestly.
At the age of six, a boy-child is constituted of impressions—soft wax to the working of any fingers that touch his heart. ”

“ Janet, the only one, would urge her to it if she knew. There was no doubt in her mind that friendship had prompted him. It was a considerate thought on his part to come and offer to take her out because he had imagined she might be lonely. She felt grateful to him, but with no desire to show it. If it pleased him to be generous on her behalf, why should she refuse to profit by it? But here was no thought of giving in return. A woman seldom meets but one man in the world to whom she will give without a shadow of the desire for the value in return. ”

“ And, after all, what is it in itself, when the gilt of its glamour is stripped, like tinsel, from the fairy's pantomimic wand?
There is, when everything has been said, only one value in chastity in its ideal sense, so long as we are tied to these conditions of human instinct, and that is in the value that it brings to women. Without it, a woman may be the essence of fascination; she may be the completeness of attraction, but for the need of the race she is undesirable. Without chastity, a woman may be most things to a man, but she cannot be a mother to his child. ”

“ Apsley Manor; she said it half aloud, and the picture was thrust into her mind. She could see red gables, old tiled roofs, latticed windows, overlooking sloping lawns, herbaceous borders with the shadows of yew trees lying lazily across them. She could smell the scent of stocks. The colours of sweet-peas and climbing roses filled her eyes. In that moment, she had fallen into the morass of romance, and through it all, like a gift of God, permeated the sense that it belonged to this man who had dropped like a meteor upon the cold, uncoloured world of her existence. ”

“ It is these little things—the saving of a feather boa, the destruction of a flimsy hat frame—that are the seed of big issues. Every book, as is this, is in its way a study in the evolution of a crisis, the germ of tiny incident which through a thousand stages grows in strength and magnitude until it takes upon itself the stature of some giant event.
The thought of her clothes that had entered Sally's mind brought her one step further, prepared her for the silent permission she gave him, when he took the vacant seat beside her and shared the umbrella between them. ”

“ Only upon that mimic platform of fame, raised where the eyes of all can watch the figure as it treads the boards, have women stood apart where the recorder can jot their names upon a scroll of history for the world to read. There is no virtue essential here; virtue indeed but adds a glamour with its absence.
There is some subtle attraction in a Catherine of Russia or a Manon Lescaut which tempts the cunning lust of men to cry their praise for the nobility of heart that lies beneath. But what elusive charm is there in the mother of children whose stainless virtue is her only personality? ”

“ When, only a few moments before, her senses have been giddily balancing upon a precipice, saved from the hopeless downfall, only because the man put out no hand to pull her over, a woman is not likely to delay in doubt when at last he offers his hands, his eyes and his voice to drag her into the ultimate abyss of ecstasy.
Sally delayed, only with the natural instinct of reserve. Eventually, she knew she must tell him; if not in words, then by actions, looks—even by silence itself.
"I never thought you meant that bet," she began in timid procrastination. ”

“ Together they both drew a deep breath as Traill turned the handle and opened the door. A physical sickness made them weak. Janet half tumbled, half ran into the room. The length of Traill's strides brought him even with her.
Sally was there. Sally was in the room. She lay crumpled on the bed, her legs drawn up, twisted, bent; one arm thrown out covering her face, her other hand gripping a corner of the bed-clothes, stretching out from her in tautened creases. She looked as though some giant hand had knotted her fragile body with fingers of iron. ”

“ You sow an idea—you sow a seed. It grows upwards through a soil of subliminal unconsciousness until it lifts its head into the clear air of realization. There is no limitation of time, no need for watchful dependence upon the season. Only the moment and the husbandry of circumstances are essential. With these, perhaps a single hour is all that may be required for the seed to open, the shoots to sprout, the plant itself to bear the fruit of action in the fierce light of reality.
In Traill's mind the idea was sown when he stood outside the office of Bonsfield & Co. ”

“ What did it signify, so long as the deepest beating of her heart was unmoved by the quickened pulses and the eyes alight with a reckless laughter?
It mattered nothing to her who knew its meaning; but to Devenish, seeing the colour lifting to her cheeks, watching the sparkling in those eyes which had met his but an hour or more ago, when disappointed hope had thrown them into deep shadows, there was a tentative significance. It appealed to the lowest nature of his senses to see her, whom he had long desired, unbending in her reticence. Her laughter was a whip about his body ”

“ Just as within that strange house you see schemes of colour that you would never have thought of, furniture and pictures that are not of your taste at all, so Sally saw for one brief moment the glimpse of a mind that could casually make a jest of death and holy-written things. A great deal of that servile obedience to the religion in which she had been brought up had been driven out of her by hard work. You might not get the priesthood to admit it, but religion is a luxury which few of the hard-workers in this world can afford. ”

“ Then I came downstairs, saw all these little tables with their vases of flowers, the spotless serviettes sticking up like white horns out of the wine-glasses, saw the beaming face of Berthe over there; was greeted with, 'Bon soir, Monsieur;' and so I dined. That's a year and a half ago. I've had my dinner, on an average, three times a week here ever since."
"It must be nice to be a man," said Sally.
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know; to dine where you like, find out these quaint little places, never to have to think of the impression you give by what you do." ”

“ Traill cast a swift glance at her, comprehending that there lay some meaning behind her words, yet knowing nothing of the duel that was being fought under his very eyes.
Mrs. Durlacher smiled. She took the thrust as gracefully as she had given her own.
To the trained hand and to the practised eyes, these things can not only be done with dexterity, they can be done with ease and with style. There are many who imagine that the days of romance are over because gentlemen do no longer saunter through the salons of the rich with pointed rapiers tapping at their heels. ”

“ There is no more disarming passe in the everlasting duel between a man and a woman than this appeal—whether it be made intentionally or not—the appeal to his honour as a gentleman. Up flies the glittering rapier from his hand, he is weaponless—and at her mercy. For every man, even more especially when he is not one, would be thought a gentleman.
Traill, disarmed, defenceless, weighing every possibility, every intention, was still faced with the unequal balance, her gentle faith in the best of him dragging down the scale. ”

“ How could she remain, how face the reproach, no matter what effort she knew he would make to conceal it, which at any moment she might find herself compelled to meet in the eyes of Wilfrid Grierson? Cailsham was too small a place, the little set in which her mother moved too narrow and confined to ever hope of avoiding it. This must end her life at Cailsham.
With the readiness of this realization, then, why had she told? Cry the woman a fool! She was a fool. Most good women are. But just as the matter is vital in the mind of a man, so is it in the woman the crucial test of honour. ”

“ We want a clean towel, Sally. I sopped up some tea I spilt with this last night. No—but can't you see, there's no need for you to be so miserable as you think. Men only make a sacrifice when they really love a woman. He'll come back to you, like a duck to the water. You know he will. Do you think if he'd cared for you at all, he'd have given tuppence whether he taught you what most men teach most women. The only woman a man thinks he has no real claim to, is the woman he loves; he believes he has a proprietary right to nearly every other blessed one he meets, and has only got to assert it. ”

“ With a woman that is impossible. Considerate at every other time of the impression which she gives, a woman, with the full light of emotion upon her, throws appearances to the winds. She will cry, though she knows there is nothing less prepossessing; she will distend nostrils, curl her lip with an ugly turn, fling herself utterly into the grip of the situation, and lose dignity in the tempest of her feelings, unless it be, as in some cases, that the imperiousness of anger should add a dignity to her stature.
So, in that moment, it became with Sally. ”

“ To such a day, from the grey fogs and lightless hours of winter, one comes, finding life well worth its while. Sally sat with her hand wrapped in Traill's, giving vent to a thousand expressions of delight, drawing his sudden attention to the thousand things that pleased her eye—the faint wash of green from the buds upon the hedgerows, the bright clusters of primroses that struck light through the shadows in the wood, forcing life through the thick carpet of dead leaves that the trees had given back to earth. ”

“ Violent sensations, deep emotions, these are the accelerations of time. They produce—momentarily no doubt—the same effect as do the passing of years over which such intensity of feeling is more evenly distributed. In those few hours, since she had heard from Devenish that another woman was claiming the attentions of Traill's mind, Sally had aged—withered almost—in the fierce stress of her passion of jealousy. It had passed over her like the sirocco of the desert, leaving her parched, dried, shrivelled, as a child grown old before its years. ”

“ Her steps took her onwards down Pall Mall, but they were slower and more measured than before. At the Carlton Restaurant, she stopped again. She wanted to give him back the bangle herself; to tell him herself how utterly she knew it was at an end. She could write, certainly; she could send the little box by post. She had said she would. But a romance, the only romance she had ever had in her life, to end through the tepid medium of the post—the letter dropped in through the black and gaping slit—just the one moment's thrill that now he must get it! ”