Then she would find herself grow gay. . . . But in half
an hour the gaiety went; she felt like a person who is burning up
with an inward flame; desiccating at the soul with thirst;
withering up in the vitals. One evening she went into Edward's
gun-room--he had gone to a meeting of the National Reserve
Committee. On the table beside his chair was a decanter of
whisky. She poured out a wineglassful and drank it off. Flame
then really seemed to fill her body; her legs swelled; her face grew
feverish. She dragged her tall height up to her room and lay in the
dark. The bed reeled beneath her; she gave way to the thought that
she was in Edward's arms; that he was kissing her on her face that
burned; on her shoulders that burned, and on her neck that was on
fire.
She never touched alcohol again. Not once after that did she have
such thoughts. They died out of her mind; they left only a feeling
of shame so insupportable that her brain could not take it in and
they vanished. She imagined that her anguish at the thought of
Edward's love for another person was solely sympathy for
Leonora; she determined that the rest of her life must be spent in
acting as Leonora's handmaiden--sweeping, tending,
embroidering, like some Deborah, some medieval saint--I am not,
unfortunately, up in the Catholic hagiology.
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