Page:Possession (1926).pdf/233

 matic came to her aid. She saw herself sitting there calm and a little cold, slowly but surely winning in the battle. She listened to his abuse. It did not enrage her. It did not even make her weep. It seemed rather to increase her coldness, her very strength. She felt him beating against the wall of her serenity and a kind of fierce triumph flowed through her body. For a time she possessed truly a great magnificence. At a little distance, she stood outside herself and watched the spectacle. She saw him standing by her, white with anger.

"You have lied to me. . . ." he was saying. "You have never cared at all. . . ." And again the reproach. "You are like all your women . . . cold . . . magnificent . . . not worthy of love." He came nearer to her. "I will love you. . . . I will teach you what love can be. . . . What does he know of love . . . ? Nothing. . . . I will give you a happiness such as you never dreamed of. . . . I . . . I am a lover. . . . I know these things."

And then he went down suddenly upon his knees, the steel gone swiftly from his voice; the warmth and tenderness flowing back. "You will not refuse me." He leaned forward and pressed his head against her. "You cannot. . . . I will give you everything . . . all the things which he cannot give you. . . ." And again he took her hands and this time kissed them passionately in a fashion that frightened her and filled her with the old weakness.

The spectacle of his humility, of this sudden collapse of what to her was his dignity, his will, his strength, astonished and embarrassed her. In her coldness it seemed to her incredible that any woman, least of all herself, should possess such power over any man. It was all unreal, beyond belief, and yet it fed her pride and gave her strength with which, one might have said, to destroy her own happiness, to resist the force of circumstances, even of nature, as she had defied it once before in marrying Clarence.

At last he rested his head against her knee and she bent over him, touching his dark hair with gentle fingers. 