It was quite simple. Nothing mattered to her so long as
Rowcliffe lived. And if he died nothing would ever matter to her
again.
* * * * *
For she knew now what it was that had happened to her. She could no
longer humbug herself into insisting that it hadn't happened. The
thing had been secret and treacherous with her, and she had been
secret and treacherous with it. She had refused to acknowledge it,
not because she had been ashamed of it but because, with the dreadful
instance of Alice before her eyes, she had been afraid. She had
been afraid of how it would appear to Rowcliffe. He might see in it
something morbid and perverted, something horribly like Ally. She
went in terror of the taint. Where it should have held its head up
defiantly and beautifully, it had been beaten back; it cowered and
skulked in the dark places and waited for its hour.
And now that it showed itself naked, unveiled, unarmed, superbly
defenseless, her terror of it ceased.
It had received a sanction that had been withheld from it before.
Until half an hour ago (she was aware of it) there had been something
lacking in her feeling. Mary and Ally (this she was not aware of) got
more "out of" Rowcliffe, so to speak, than she did. Gwenda had known
nothing approaching to Mary's serene and brooding satisfaction or
Ally's ecstasy. She dreaded the secret gates, the dreamy labyrinths,
the poisonous air of the Paradise of Fools.
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