He seemed to lean over her now, his burning, quivering hand on hers.  She felt a deep hot flush rise to her face, all over her body.  She was like a crimson rose, offering the splendor of its maturity to be plucked.  Let her have the courage to know that its end and aim and fulfilment lay in being plucked and gloriously worn before the coming of the inevitable end!  Thus and thus only could one find certainty, before death came, of having lived as deeply as lay in one to live.

* * * * *

Through the glowing pride and defiance with which she felt herself rise to the challenge, felt herself strong to break and surmount all obstacles within and without, which stood in the way of that fulfilment of her complete self, she had heard . . . the slightest of trivialities . . . a thought gone as soon as it was conceived . . . nothing of the slightest consequence . . . harmless . . . insignificant . . . yet why should it give off the betraying clink of something flawed and cracked? . . .  She had heard . . . it must have come from some corner of her own mind . . . something like this, “Set such an alternative between routine, traditional, narrow domestic life, and the mightiness and richness of mature passion, before a modern, free European woman, and see how quickly she would grasp with all her soul for passion.”

What was there about this, the veriest flying mote among a thousand others in the air, so to awaken in Marise’s heart a deep vibration of alarm?  Why should she not have said that? she asked herself, angry and scared.  Why was it not a natural thought to have had?  She felt herself menaced by an unexpected enemy, and flew to arms.

Into the rich, hot, perfumed shrine which Vincent’s remembered words and look had built there about her, there blew a thin cool breath from the outside, through some crack opened by that casual thought.  Before she even knew from whence it came, Marise cried out on it, in a fury of resentment . . . and shivered in it.

With no apparent volition of her own, she felt something very strong within her raise a mighty head and look about, stirred to watchfulness and suspicion by that luckless phrase.

She recognized it . . . the habit of honesty of thought, not native to Marise’s heart, but planted there by her relation with Neale’s stark, plain integrity.  Feeding unchecked on its own food, during the long years of her marriage it had grown insensibly stronger and stronger, till now, tyrant and master, with the irresistible strength of conscious power, it could quell with a look all the rest of her nature, rich in colored possibilities of seductive self-deceit, sweet illusions, lovely falsities.

She could no more stop its advance now, straight though it made its way over treasures she fain would keep, than she could stop the beating of her heart.