Once there, he had used her natural sympathy as a means whereby
to exercise his hypnotic power, and all she had seen was merely the
creation of his own libidinous fancy. But though she sought to persuade
herself that, in playing a vile trick on her, he had taken a shameful
advantage of her pity, she could not look upon him with anger. Her
contempt for him, her utter loathing, were alloyed with a feeling that
aroused in her horror and dismay. She could not get the man out of her
thoughts. All that he had said, all that she had seen, seemed, as though
it possessed a power of material growth, unaccountably to absorb her. It
was as if a rank weed were planted in her heart and slid long poisonous
tentacles down every artery, so that each part of her body was enmeshed.
Work could not distract her, conversation, exercise, art, left her
listless; and between her and all the actions of life stood the
flamboyant, bulky form of Oliver Haddo. She was terrified of him now
as never before, but curiously had no longer the physical repulsion
which hitherto had mastered all other feelings.
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