One more reason came and took possession of her common
sense. Between her father and Elfrida she felt herself
a complication. If she could bring herself to consent to
her own removal, the situation, she could not help seeing,
would be considerably simplified. She read plainly in
her father that the finality Elfrida promised had not
yet been given--doubtless an opportunity had not yet
occurred; and Janet was willing to concede that the
circumstances might require a rather special opportunity.
When it should occur she recognized that delicacy, decency
almost, demanded that she should be out of the way. She
shrank miserably from the prospect of being a daily
familiar looker-on at the spectacle of Lawrence Cardiff's
pain, and she had a knowledge that there would be somehow
an aggravation of it in her person. In a year everything
would mend itself more or less, she believed dully and
tried to feel. Her father would be the same again, with
his old good-humor and criticism of her enthusiasms, his
old interest in things and people, his old comradeship
for her. John Kendal would have married Elfrida Bell--
what an idyll they would make of life together!--and she,
Janet, would have accepted the situation.
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