And, no doubt, she had her share of
the sex instinct that makes women be intolerably cruel to the
beloved person. Anyhow, I don't know whether, at this point,
Nancy Rufford loved Edward Ashburnham. I don't know whether
she even loved him when, on getting, at Aden, the news of his
suicide she went mad. Because that may just as well have been for
the sake of Leonora as for the sake of Edward. Or it may have
been for the sake of both of them. I don't know. I know nothing. I
am very tired. Leonora held passionately the doctrine that the girl
didn't love Edward. She wanted desperately to believe that. It was
a doctrine as necessary to her existence as a belief in the personal
immortality of the soul. She said that it was impossible that Nancy
could have loved Edward after she had given the girl her view of
Edward's career and character. Edward, on the other hand,
believed maunderingly that some essential attractiveness in
himself must have made the girl continue to go on loving him--to
go on loving him, as it were, in underneath her official aspect of
hatred. He thought she only pretended to hate him in order to save
her face and he thought that her quite atrocious telegram from
Brindisi was only another attempt to do that--to prove that she had
feelings creditable to a member of the feminine commonweal.
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