Howat
wanted to ask her how she had experienced, well--love, since there was
no other word. It had come to her quickly, he knew; her affair with
Gilbert Penny had been headlong, or else it would not have been at all;
yet he felt she had not been the victim of such a tyranny as mastered
himself. But, perhaps, after all, secretly, every one was--just
animal-like. He repudiated this firmly, at once. He himself had felt
that he was not entirely animal.
"The girls," Isabel Penny said, "will be gallopading now. Myrtle has a
new dress, her father gave it to her, an apricot mantua."
"He's really idiotic about Myrtle," Howat declared irritably. His mother
glanced swiftly at him. She made no comment. "Now Caroline! It's
Caroline who ought to marry David Forsythe."
"Such things must fall out as they will."
God, that was true enough, terribly true! He rose and strode into the
farther darkness of the drawing room, returning to the fireplace,
marching away again. He saw the white glimmer of Ludowika's arms; he
had a vision of her tying the broad ribbon about her rounded, silken
knee. "... a man now," his mother's voice was distant, blurred.
"Responsibilities; your father--" He had heard this before without being
moved; but suddenly the words had a new actuality; he was a man now,
that was to say he stood finally, irrevocably, alone, beyond assistance,
advice.
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