"Nothing ever touches me
either painfully or pleasurably. Nothing will ever make me glad again."
She said this one evening when she was sitting alone with Claudia and
myself, and there was a long silence after she had finished speaking,
during which she sat in a dejected attitude, her face buried in her
hands.
All at once she looked up.
"It is very strange," she said, "but half that feeling seems to have
gone with the expression of it."
"I think," Claudia decided, in her common-sense tone, "that you are
nursing this unholy passion, Ideala. You are afraid to give it up lest
there should be nothing left to you. Can you not free your mind from
the trammels of it, and grasp something higher, better, and nobler? Can
you not become mistress of yourself again, and enter on a larger life
which shall be full of love--not the narrow, selfish passion you are
cherishing for one, but that pure and holy love which only the best--
and such women as you may always be of the best--can feel for all? If
you could but get the fumes of this evil feeling out of yourself, you
would see, as we see, what a common thing it is, and you would
recognise, as we recognise, that your very expression of it is just
such as is given to it by every hysterical man or woman that has ever
experienced it.
Pages:
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288