The world, foul hag with
the downcast eyes and lascivious lips, could not believe it possible,
and was quick to draw its dark mantle of disgrace over their shrinking
heads. One of them, unable to bear this, asked her husband's pardon.
She was a weak spirit, and now lives prostrate days, crushed beneath
the unchanging horror of a husband's free forgiveness. The other took
a cottage and laughed at the world. Was she not happy at last, and
happy in the right way? I go to see her sometimes, and we eat the
cabbages she has grown herself. Strange how the disillusioned find
their peace in cabbages.
Priscilla, then, wanted to run away. What is awful in a housemaid and
in anybody's wife became in her case stupendous. The spirit that could
resolve it, decide to do it without being dragged to it by such things
as love or passion, calmly looking the risks and losses in the face,
and daring everything to free itself, was, it must be conceded, at
least worthy of respect. Fritzing thought it worthy of adoration; the
divinest spirit that had ever burned within a woman.
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