Fanny looked
up. She wrenched herself violently away.
"Oh, it's all very well!--but we can't all be such saints as you. It'd
be all right if he married me directly--_directly_," she repeated,
hurriedly.
Diana knelt still immovable. In her face was that agonized shock and
recoil with which the young and pure, the tenderly cherished and
guarded, receive the first withdrawal of the veil which hides from them
the more brutal facts of life. But, as she knelt there, gazing at Fanny,
another expression stole upon and effaced the first. Taking shape and
body, as it were, from the experience of the moment, there rose into
sight the new soul developed in her by this tragic year. Not for
her--not for Juliet Sparling's daughter--the plea of cloistered
innocence! By a sharp transition her youth had passed from the Chamber
of Maiden Thought into the darkened Chamber of Experience. She had
steeped her heart in the waters of sin and suffering; she put from her
in an instant the mere maiden panic which had drawn her to her knees.
"Fanny, I'll help you!" she said, in a low voice, putting her arms round
her cousin. "Don't cry--I'll help you.
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