Had he made a slave of her, she
would have accepted her lot as uncomplainingly as the women of her race
had acquiesced in such a fate for stolid generations. She could have
understood that. As it was, she felt always the strain of being tried
by standards which she did not and could not comprehend; the misery of
being in a place for which she was unfitted and which she could not
fill, and the fact that no definite demands were made upon her
increased her trouble by the double stress of putting her upon her own
responsibility, and of leaving her ignorant in what her failures lay.
There was, too, who knows what trace of heredity in the readiness with
which Ninitta tacitly adopted the idea that infidelity to a husband was
rather a matter of discretion and secrecy; whereas faithfulness to her
lover had been a point of the most rigorous honor. And Ninitta found
Arthur Fenton's silken sympathy so insinuating, so soothing; the
tempter, merely from his marvellous adaptability and faultless tact, so
satisfied her womanly craving, and fostered her vanity; she was so
completely made to feel that she was understood; she was tempted with a
cunning the more infernal because Fenton kept himself always up to the
level of sincerity by never admitting to himself that he intended any
evil, that it was small wonder that the time came when her ardent
Italian nature was so kindled that she became involuntarily the tempter
in her turn.
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