Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/352

350 that pleasant, shimmering illusion of possibility was gone. He was more sympathetic to her in many ways than Basil, she even liked him better, but she had no real emotion for him. Basil had taken it all—all! He had taken her whole self, her will, her imagination, her entire power of loving. She was drained of it all. There was nothing left. She was bound—bound! And she wept with anger as she realised how completely she was delivered into his hands, how vain had been her pretense that she could do without him, could "console" herself. He might be unfaithful, but she never could. How strange was that bond, deeper than the will, deeper than any sympathy of mind, taking no account of the many things in him that she deeply disliked, of the fact that she really disliked his character! It. was infinitely more than a physical bond, it was a passion of the soul. How strange and how terrible!

She looked up at the mountain-chain, black as midnight, cutting with its jagged edge the starry sky; and all its mass suddenly seemed to her an illusion, something immaterial that might dissolve away at a breath. Why was she here in the midst of this unreality, this play-scene set for a drama which did not begin? She felt as though she were in a dream—one of those fatiguing nightmares where endless time passes in preparation for something that never happens.