dBooks desire

Still, she was
released from a bondage that seemed slavish even to her,
and the release gave her a sensation akin to the joy of
freedom. A heavy hand that was crushing her very
soul had been lifted off--no, FLUNG off, and by herself.
That thought, terrifying though it was, also gave her
a certain new and exalting self-respect. After all, she
was not a worm. She must have somewhere in her the
germs of something less contemptible than the essential
character of so many of the eminently respectable
women she knew. She could picture them in the situation
in which she had found herself. What would they
have done? Why, what every instinct of her education
impelled her to do; what some latent love of freedom,
some unsuspected courage of self-respect had forbidden
her to do, had withheld her from doing.
Her thoughts and the gorgeous sunshine and her
youth and health put her in a steadily less cheerless
mood as by a roundabout way she sought the shop of the
jeweler who sold the general the gold bag she had
selected.


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