But his sharp demand for something more
than a face and form had awakened her, and to her dismay she learned
that her real and lasting self was as dwarfed and deformed as her
transient and outward self was perfect.
The artist seemed to her princely, regal even, in his strong
cultivated manhood, his lofty calling and ambition, and his high
social rank. As for herself, it now appeared that her beauty,
whose spell she had thought no man could resist, had lured him to
her side only long enough to discover what she was and who she was,
and then he had turned away in disgust.
From their first moment of meeting, she felt that she had been
peculiarly unfortunate in the impressions she had made upon him.
Her attendant at the concert-garden had been a fool; and now he
was associating her with a man whom he more than despised. She
believed that he pitied her father as the victim of a wife's
heartlessness and a daughter's selfishness and frivolity, and that
he felt a repugnance toward her mother which his politeness could
not wholly disguise. He was probably learning to characterize them
in his mind by her father's horrible words--"froth and mud."
Such miserable thoughts were flocking round her like croaking
ravens as she sat rigid and motionless in her room, her form tense
from the severity of her mental distress.
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