He was certain
that if she had once submitted to him she would remain his for
ever. He knew that.
She was thinking that her aunt had said he had desired her to love
him from a distance of five thousand miles. She said: "I can never
love you now I know the kind of man you are. I will belong to you
to save your life. But I can never love you."
It was a fantastic display of cruelty. She didn't in the least know
what it meant--to belong to a man. But, at that Edward pulled
himself together. He spoke in his normal tones; gruff, husky,
overbearing, as he would have done to a servant or to a horse.
"Go back to your room," he said. "Go back to your room and go to
sleep. This is all nonsense."
They were baffled, those two women.
And then I came on the scene.
VI MY coming on the scene certainly calmed things down--for the
whole fortnight that intervened between my arrival and the girl's
departure. I don't mean to say that the endless talking did not go
on at night or that Leonora did not send me out with the girl and,
in the interval, give Edward a hell of a time. Having discovered
what he wanted--that the girl should go five thousand miles away
and love him steadfastly as people do in sentimental novels, she
was determined to smash that aspiration.
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