No one would have
objected since we were fiances and, in addition, cousins. And it is
difficult to define exactly the impulse that had prompted me to
abstain from all of these things. Partly it was an impulse in her
defence, and partly in my own. I felt that it was difficult enough,
hard enough, to keep in perfect control my own passionate impulses
when I was with her, even now, while there was the screen and shield
between us of her abstracted calm; when there was a certain coldness
and reserve around her; when there was no beginning, no opening, no
invitation of demonstration; when her complete unconsciousness of
herself helped me to restrain and conceal all my own feelings; but
if this were dispelled; if she came to greet me with the bright
conscious flush of passion; if I saw reflected in her eyes the fire
that burnt in me; if I were permitted to take her into my arms and
cheat myself for a single illusive instant with the thought that she
was mine--what would it all mean? Only giving a sharper, more
cutting edge to the bit in my mouth and rousing in her a hunger I
could not satisfy. She was at present devoted to her art with a
devotion that left her practically indifferent to everything else,
and there was a thin frame of ice round her, which her abstraction
and her ceaseless work built up; but I was convinced that the
smouldering fire of a woman's nature lay underneath--that it was
concealed never cheated me for an instant into the belief it was not
existent.
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