Chance

It was years afterwards that she used to talk like this to Mrs. Fyne--and

to Mrs. Fyne alone. Nobody else ever heard the story from her lips. But

it was never forgotten. It was always felt; it remained like a mark on

her soul, a sort of mystic wound, to be contemplated, to be meditated

over. And she said further to Mrs. Fyne, in the course of many

confidences provoked by that contemplation, that, as long as that woman

called her names, it was almost soothing, it was in a manner reassuring.

Her imagination had, like her body, gone off in a wild bound to meet the

unknown; and then to hear after all something which more in its tone than

in its substance was mere venomous abuse, had steadied the inward flutter

of all her being.

"She called me a little fool more times than I can remember. I! A fool!

Why, Mrs. Fyne! I do assure you I had never yet thought at all; never of

anything in the world, till then. I just went on living. And one can't

be a fool without one has at least tried to think. But what had I ever

to think about?"

"And no doubt," commented Marlow, "her life had been a mere life of

sensations--the response to which can neither be foolish nor wise. It

can only be temperamental; and I believe that she was of a generally

happy disposition, a child of the average kind. Even when she was asked

violently whether she imagined that there was anything in her, apart from

her money, to induce any intelligent person to take any sort of interest

in her existence, she only caught her breath in one dry sob and said

nothing, made no other sound, made no movement. When she was viciously

assured that she was in heart, mind, manner and appearance, an utterly

common and insipid creature, she remained still, without indignation,

without anger. She stood, a frail and passive vessel into which the

other went on pouring all the accumulated dislike for all her pupils, her

scorn of all her employers (the ducal one included), the accumulated

resentment, the infinite hatred of all these unrelieved years of--I won't

say hypocrisy. The practice of perfect hypocrisy is a relief in itself,

a secret triumph of the vilest sort, no doubt, but still a way of getting

even with the common morality from which some of us appear to suffer so

much. No! I will say the years, the passionate, bitter years, of

restraint, the iron, admirably mannered restraint at every moment, in a

never-failing perfect correctness of speech, glances, movements, smiles,

gestures, establishing for her a high reputation, an impressive record of

success in her sphere. It had been like living half strangled for years.