triumphant sense that AS SHE WAS, with her flattened
hair, her tired pallor, her thin sleeves a little tumbled by
the weight of her jacket, he would like her even better,
feel her nearer, dearer, more desirable, than in all the
splendours she might put on for him. In the light of this
discovery she studied her face with a new intentness, seeing
its defects as she had never seen them, yet seeing them
through a kind of radiance, as though love were a luminous
medium into which she had been bodily plunged.

She was glad now that she had confessed her doubts and her
jealousy. She divined that a man in love may be flattered
by such involuntary betrayals, that there are moments when
respect for his liberty appeals to him less than the
inability to respect it: moments so propitious that a
woman's very mistakes and indiscretions may help to
establish her dominion. The sense of power she had been
aware of in talking to Darrow came back with ten-fold force.
She felt like testing him by the most fantastic exactions,
and at the same moment she longed to humble herself before
him, to make herself the shadow and echo of his mood. She
wanted to linger with him in a world of fancy and yet to
walk at his side in the world of fact. She wanted him to
feel her power and yet to love her for her ignorance and
humility. She felt like a slave, and a goddess, and a girl
in her teens...



XIII