Once or twice he
held the pages closer to his face to catch it more
perfectly.
Janet had not mentioned the matter to him again; indeed,
she had hardly thought of it. Her whole nature was absorbed
in her fight with herself, in the struggle for self-control,
which had ceased to come to the surface of her life at
intervals, and had now become constant and supreme with
her. Kendal had made it harder for her lately by continually
talking of Elfrida. He brought his interest in her to
Janet to discuss as he naturally brought everything that
touched him to her, and Janet, believing it to be a
lover's pleasure, could not forbid him. When he criticised
Elfrida, Janet fancied it was to hear her warm defence,
which grew oddly reckless in her anxiety to hide the
bitterness that tinged it.
"Otherwise," she permitted herself to reflect, "he is
curiously just in his analysis of her--for a man," and
hated the thought for its touch of disloyalty.
Knowing Elfrida as she thought she knew her, Kendal's
talk wounded her once for herself and twice for him. He
was going on blindly, confidently, trusting, Janet thought
bitterly, to his own sweetness of nature, to his comeliness
and the fineness of his sympathies--who had ever refused
him anything yet? And only to his hurt, to his repulse--from
the point of view of sentiment, to his ruin.
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