Sometimes she thought she could have borne it better if some one had said outright:
“We know that you love Reuben; that Reuben loves you after a fashion. But it is no good crying for the moon; take your half loaf and be thankful for it.”
It was this absolute, stony ignoring of all that had gone before which seemed to crush the life out of her.
She was growing to feel that in loving Reuben she had committed a crime too shameful for decent people even to speak of.
That Reuben had ever loved her she now doubted. It had all been a chimera of the emotional female brain, of which Reuben, who was subject, as we know, to occasional lapses of taste, had often confided to her his contempt. Yet even now there were moments when, remembering all that had gone before, it seemed to her impossible that Reuben should do long without her.
If she flew in the face of nature and said “Yes” to Bertie, surely he would come forward and protest against such an outrage.
Every day she devoured the scraps of news which the papers contained respecting the coming election at St. Baldwin’s.
Sometimes her mind dwelt on the splendours of the prospect held out before her; splendours which, in her ignorance, she was disposed to exaggerate. Reuben, climbing to those social heights, which for herself she had always deemed inaccessible, Reuben reaching the summit, would find her there before him. That would impress him greatly, she knew.
Let this thought be forgiven her; let it be remembered who was her hero, and how little choice there had been for her in the matter of heroes.
Yet such are the contradictions of our nature, that had the Admirable Crichton stood before her, Don Quixote, or Sir Galahad himself, I cannot answer for Judith that she would not have turned from them to the mixed, imperfect human creature—Reuben Sachs.