In place of herself she should be considering Dodge; her sympathy even for him was submerged in her own extraordinary injury. However, she recovered from her first gasping shock, and made an utterly commonplace remark. Never had her sense of isolation been stronger. “I must admit,” her husband continued, “that I looked for some small display of concern. I give you my word there are moments when I think Pleydon himself cut you out of stone. He isn't great enough for that, though; in the way of perfection you successfully gild the lily. A thing held to be impossible.”
Linda told him with amazing inanity that his opinion of her was unreliable; and, contented, he lightly pursued his admiration of what he called her boreal charm. At intervals she responded appropriately and proceeded with breakfast. She had entered a region of dispassionate consideration, her characteristic detachment, she thought, regained. She mentally, calmly, reconstructed the motives and events that had led to the destruction of the statue; they, at least, were evident to her. She reaffirmed silently her conviction that it had resulted from the stupidity, the vanity, of a woman. The limitations of men, fully as narrow, operated in other directions.
Then, with an incredulous surprise, she was aware that the clear space of her reason was filling with anger. Never before had such a flood of emotion possessed her; and she surrendered herself, in an enormous relief, to the novelty of its obliterating tide. It deepened immeasurably, sweeping her far from the security of old positions of indifference and critical self-possession. Linda became enraged at a world that had concentrated all its degraded vulgarity in one unspeakable act.
XXXVII
It was fall, October, and the day was a space of pale gold foliage wreathed in blue garlands of mist. The gardener was busy with a wooden rake and wheelbarrow in which he carted away dead leaves for burning. The fire was back of the low fence, in the rear, and Linda, at the dining-room window, could hear the fierce small crackle of flames; the drifting pungent smoke was like a faint breath of ammonia. Arnaud had left for the day, Lowrie was at the university, while Vigné and her husband—moving toward their ultimate colonial threshold—had taken a small house. She was alone.
As usual.
However, in her present state her solitude had lost its inevitability; she failed to see why it must continue until the end of time. She could no longer discover a sufficient reason for her limitless endurance, her placid acceptance of all that chance, or any inconsiderable person, happened to dictate. She wasn't like that in the least. Her temper had solidified as though it were ice, taking everywhere the form in which it was held. It was a reality. She determined, as well, that her feeling should not melt back into the familiar acceptance of a routine that had led her blindfolded across such an extent of life.
She understood now, in a large part, her disturbance at the indignity to Dodge's monument—he had assured her that she was its inspiration; except for her it would never have been realized, he would have kept on modeling those Newport fountains, continued with the Susanna Nodas, spending himself ignobly. He loved her, and that love had resulted in a statue the world of art, of taste, honored. But it was she all the while they were approving, discussing, writing about, Linda Condon.