It had hurt her, twisted her nature a little, given a fountain of
bitterness to her soul, which welled up and flooded her life sometimes.
It had given her face no sourness, but it put a shadow into her eyes.
She had been glad when Haman was condemned for murder, for she believed
he had committed it, and ten times hanging could not compensate for that
dear life gone from their sight--Lucy, the pride of her father's heart.
She was glad when Haman was condemned, because of the woman who had
stolen him from Lucy, because of that other man, her lover, gone out of
her own life. The new hardness in her rejoiced that now the woman, if
she had any heart at all, must have it bowed down by this supreme
humiliation and wrung by the ugly tragedy of the hempen rope.
And now this man before her, this man with a boy's face, with the dark
luminous eyes, whom she had saved from the frozen plains, he had that in
his breast which would free Haman, so he had said. A fury had its birth
in her at that moment. Something seemed to seize her brain and master
it, something so big that it held all her faculties in perfect control,
and she felt herself in an atmosphere where all life moved round her
mechanically, she herself the only sentient thing, so much greater than
all she saw, or all that she realised by her subconscious self.
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