She began to hate Cryder with a mortal hatred. When he left her he had flown down the perspective of her past, but now he seemed to be crawling back—nearer—nearer—
Had it not been for him she might have loved Quintard. But he had scraped the gloss from life. He had made love commonplace, vulgar. She felt a sort of moral nausea whenever she thought of love. What an ideal would love have been with Quintard in this house! There was a barbaric, almost savage element in his nature which made him seem a part of these rooms and of that Indian wilderness.
And every nook and corner was eloquent of Cryder! Sometimes she thought she would take another house. But she asked herself: Of what use? She had nothing left to give Quintard, and her house was his delight. She no longer pretended to analyze herself or to speculate on the future. Once, when sitting alone by Bessie’s bed in the night, she had opened the door of her mental photograph gallery and glanced down the room to that great, bare plate at the end. It was bare no longer. On its surface was an impression—what, she did not pause to ascertain. She shut the door hurriedly and turned the key.
At times all the evil in her nature was dominant. She dreaded hearing Quintard speak the word which would thrust her face to face with her future; but the temptation was strong to see the lightning flash in his eyes, to shake his silence as a rock shakes above the quivering earth. And Quintard kept his control because he saw that she was trying to tempt him, and he determined that he would not yield an inch until he was ready.
She made up her mind to go away from all memory of Cryder and live on some Mediterranean island with Quintard. She was not fit to be any man’s wife, and life could never be what it might have been; but at least she would have him, and she could not live without him. There were softer moments, when she felt poignant regret for the mistake of her past, when she had brief, fleeting longings for a higher life of duty, and of a love that was something more than intellectual companionship and possession.
Quintard’s book came out and aroused a hot dispute. He was accused of coarseness and immorality on the one side, and granted originality and vigor on the other. The ultra-conservative faction refused him a place in American literature. The radical and advanced wing said that American literature had some blood in its veins at last. Hermia took all the papers, and a day seldom passed that Quintard’s name, either in execration or commendation, did not meet her eyes. The derogatory articles cut her to the quick or aroused her to fury; and the adulation he received delighted her as keenly as if offered to herself.
He was with her in his periods of elation and depression, and it was at such times that the better part of her nature was stirred. He needed her. She could give him that help and comfort and sympathy without which his life would be barren. She knew that under the hard, outer crust of her nature lay the stunted germs of self-abnegation and sacrifice, and there were moments when she longed with all the ardor of her quickening soul to give her life to this man’s happiness and good. Then the mood would pass, and she would look back upon it with impatience.