It is impossible to
say that Leonora, in acting as she then did, was not filled with a
sort of hatred of Edward's final virtue. She wanted, I think, to
despise him. He was, she realized gone from her for good. Then
let him suffer, let him agonize; let him, if possible, break and go
to that Hell that is the abode of broken resolves. She might have
taken a different line. It would have been so easy to send the girl
away to stay with some friends; to have taken her away herself
upon some pretext or other. That would not have cured things but
it would have been the decent line, . . . But, at that date, poor
Leonora was incapable of taking any line whatever.
She pitied Edward frightfully at one time--and then she acted
along the lines of pity; she loathed him at another and then she
acted as her loathing dictated. She gasped, as a person dying of
tuberculosis gasps for air. She craved madly for communication
with some other human soul. And the human soul that she
selected was that of the girl.
Perhaps Nancy was the only person that she could have talked to.
With her necessity for reticences, with her coldness of manner,
Leonora had singularly few intimates.
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