Craven was certainly fond of her already. Quietly she had triumphed that night. Three women had seen and had quite understood her little triumph. Probably all of them had wondered about it, had been secretly irritated by it. Certainly Beryl had been very much irritated. But in spite of that triumph, Lady Sellingworth felt almost desperately afraid that night when she was alone. For she knew how great the difference was between her feeling for Craven and his feeling for her. And with greater intimacy that difference, she felt sure, must even increase. For she would want from him what he would never want or even dream of wanting, from her. He would be satisfied in their friendship while she would be almost starving. He would never know that cruel longing to touch which marks the difference between what is love and what is friendship.
If she now let herself go, took no drastic step, just let life carry her on, she could have a strange and unusual, and, in its way, beautiful friendship, a friendship which to a woman with a different nature from hers might seem perfect. She could have that--and what would it be to her?
She longed to lay violent hands on herself; she longed to tear something that was an essential part of her to pieces, to scatter it to a wind, and let the wind whirl it away.
She knelt down that night before getting into bed and prayed. And when she did that she thought of Sellingworth and of his teachings and opinions. How he would have laughed at her if he had ever seen her do that! She had not wanted to do it in the years when she had been with him. But now, if his opinions had been well founded, he was only dust and perhaps a few fragments of bone. He could not laugh at her now. And she felt a really desperate need of prayer.
She did not pray to have something that she wanted. She knew that would be no use. Even if there was a God who attended to individuals, he would certainly not give her what she wanted just then. To do so would be deliberately to interfere with the natural course of things, arbitrarily to change the design. And something in Lady Sellingworth’s brain prevented her from being able even for a moment to think that God would ever do that. She prayed, therefore, that she might cease to want what she wanted; she prayed that she might have strength to do a tremendously courageous thing quickly; she prayed that she might be rewarded for doing it by afterwards having physical and mental peace; she prayed that she might be permanently changed, that she might, after this last trial, be allowed to become passionless, that what remained of the fiercely animal in her might die out, that she might henceforth be as old in nature as she already was in body. “For,” she said to herself, “only in that oldness lies safety for me! Unless I can be all old--mind and nature, as well as body--I shall suffer horribly again.”