She knew, too, that Reuben loved her as far as in him lay; knew, with a bitter humiliation, how far short of hers fell his love.
Yet deep in her heart lay the touching obstinate belief of the woman who loves—that she was necessary to him, that she alone could minister to his needs; that in turning away from her and her large protection, her infinite toleration, he was turning away from the best which life had to offer him.
In the first sharp agony of awakening, Judith, as we know, had recognized that which had grown up between her and Reuben as a reality with rights and claims of its own. And the conviction of this was slowly growing upon her in the intervals of the swinging back of the pendulum, when she judged herself by conventional standards and felt herself withered by her own scorn, the scorn of her world, and the scorn of the man she loved.
A great tear splashing down across the Triumph of Time recalled her to herself.
She shut the book and sat up in bed, sweeping back the heavy masses of hair from her forehead.
Often and often, with secret contempt and astonishment, had she seen Esther dissolved in tears over her favourite poets.
Should she grow in time to be like Esther, undignified, unreserved? Would people talk about her, pity her, say that she had had unfortunate love affairs?
Oh, yes, they would talk, that was the way of her world; even Rose who was kind, and her own mother who loved her; no doubt they had begun to talk already.
Then, with a sense of unutterable weariness, she fell back on the pillows and slept.