Elinor Glyn

“ Hanbury-Green should suffer, or that John Derringham should suffer, mattered to her not one jot. She was really and truly under the impression that only her personal comfort, pleasure and feelings were of any importance in the world. Her brain always guarded these things, and, when they were not in any jeopardy or fear of being inconvenienced, then she was capable of numbers of kind and generous actions. And, if she had ever been reproached about her colossal selfishness, she would have looked up astonished, and replied:
"Well, who is nearer to oneself than oneself?" ”

“ Cheiron consoled him with. "Those things only matter if a man has a son."
John Derringham stopped abruptly in his walk and looked at his old master.
His words gave him a strange twinge, but he crushed it down, and went on again:
"It is a curse, this want of money," he said. "It makes a man do base things that his soul revolts against." And then, in his restless moving, he absently picked up a volume of Aristotle, and his eye caught this sentence: "The courageous man therefore faces danger and performs acts of courage for the sake of what is noble." ”

“ So for the rest of that day and those that followed she behaved with maddening capriciousness, keeping him waiting for every meal and every appointment—changing her mind as to what she would do—lavishing caresses upon him which made him wince, and then treating him with mocking coldness; but all with such extreme cleverness that she never once gave him the chance to bring things to an open rupture. She was beginning really to enjoy herself in this new game—it required even more skill to torture and hold than to attract and keep at arm's length. But at last John Derringham could bear no more. ”

“ When Arabella Clinker and her mother were settled together at Wendover, a strange peace seemed to fall upon the place. John Derringham was conscious of it upstairs as he lay in his Louis XV bed. By the time he was allowed to be carried to a sofa in the sitting-room which had been arranged for him, July had well set in.
He had parted from his Cecilia with suitable things said upon either side. Even in his misery and abasement, John Derringham was too assured a spirit and too much a man of the world to have any hesitation or awkwardness. Mrs. Cricklander had been all that was sympathetic. ”

“ And there, underneath, was the feeling still for those of any country who, instinct told her, had inherited from evolution something which none of her money, and none of her talent, and none of her indomitable will, could buy. But of course Mr. Hanbury-Green was not to be considered, except as a foil for her wit—a pawn in the game for the securing of John Derringham.
Thus it was that she was able to walk in her stately way with trailing velvets down the broad stairs of her newly acquired home with a sense of exaltation and complacency which was unimpaired. ”

“ When she had gone it was as if a curtain were raised upon John Derringham's understanding. Countless circumstances came back to him when his fiancée's apparent learning had aroused his admiration, and with a twinge he remembered Cheiron's maliciously amused eyes which had met his during her visit to the orchard house, when she had become a little at sea in some of her conversation. The whole thing then was a colossal bluff—Arabella was the brain! Arabella was the erudite, cultured person and his admirable Cecilia played the rôle of extremely clever parrot! ”

“ So presently she remembered Cheiron, and turned round to see him far away still, sitting quietly beneath a giant elm stroking his long, silver beard.
"My dear, kind master!" she exclaimed to herself, and went rapidly back to him.
"That is a charming girl—your young friend," he said to her, as he got up to stroll to the gate; "full of life and common sense. There is something wonderful in the vitality of her nation. They jar dreadfully upon us old tired peoples in their worst aspects—but in their best we must recognize a new spring of life and youth for the world. ”