But that could be soon remedied; she had suffered
other, far greater, irremedial, oppressions; her very birth had
confronted her, in the puritanical self-righteousness of his world, with
an almost insuperable barrier to happiness. Still back of that, even
before the birth of himself and Essie Scofield, back, back in the
unguessed past, Eunice had been shaped, condemned. Her fate had only
culminated in his own unbalanced passion, in a desire that had blinded
him like a flash of ignited powder, leaving him with a sense of utter
void, of inexplicable need. "For what?" he demanded unconsciously and
bitterly aloud.
Eunice, startled, dropped the garment in her hands. She gazed at him
with a shrinking dread. "Come," he told her gently, "that will be very
pretty; and, don't you think, the velvet bonnet with green?" After
supper he questioned her. "What time do you usually go to bed?" She
answered promptly, "When it got too cold to stay up, at Mr. Needles',
but I wouldn't know here."
"We might go to the Circus," he suggested, half doubtful of the
propriety of such a course. However, they went. She clung tightly to his
sleeve before the illuminated, high-pillared facade of Welches' Circus,
where Jasper took seats in a box.
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