It was not, Janet told herself, that
she was afraid to face the truth in any degree of nakedness;
but she rose in hot inward rebellion against Elfrida's
borrowed psychological cynicisms--they were not the truth,
Tolstoi had not all the facts, perhaps from pure Muscovite
inability to comprehend them all The spirituality of love
might be a western product--she was half inclined to
think it was; but at all events it existed, and it was
wanton to leave out of consideration a thing that made
all the difference. Moreover, if these things ought to
be probed--and Janet was not of serious opinion that they
ought to be--for her part she preferred to obtain advices
thereon from between admissible and respectable book-covers.
It hurt her to hear them drop from Elfrida's lips--lips
so plainly meant for all tenderness. Janet had an instinct
of helpless anger when she heard them; the woman in her
rose in protest, less on behalf of her sex than on behalf
of Elfrida herself, who seemed so blind, so willing to
revile, so anxious to reject. "Do you really hope you
will marry?" Elfrida had asked her once; and Janet had
answered candidly, "Of course I do, and I want to die a
grandmother too." "_Vraiment!_" exclaimed Miss Bell
ironically, with a little shudder of disgust, "I hope
you may!"
That was in the very beginning of their friendship,
however, and so vital a subject could not remain, outside
the relations which established themselves more and more
intimately between them as the days went on.
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