Yes, everything was in perfectly regular order now and she had the afternoon to herself without any fear of interruption. So she could now sit down and rest, and--think.
Then she remained quite still for a long time in her easy chair, quite still, with her hand before her face and her eyes closed. The difficulties had been faced and overcome in a wise and philosophical way, and nothing remained to be done but to do nothing, and as she sat and thought this doing of nothing became harder than all that had gone before. She had told herself she was a person of convictions and principles when she was resolving on action and acting on resolve. She had no further need of her convictions and principles. She laid them aside with the writing materials out of which she had called forth that letter to Jack--to Mr. Hanbury. She did not realize until this moment, she had not had time to realize it, that she was a woman, a young girl who had given her heart to a young man, and that now he and she had parted to meet no more on the old terms.
It was easy to shut up the ceremonious gates of the temple and say worship was at an end in that place for ever. But how fared it in the penetralia of her heart? How did she face the inner chambers of her soul where the statue of her hero stood enshrined for worship? It cost but little effort to say that the god was deposed, but could she all at once effectually forbid the priestess to worship?
Ah, this doing of nothing when all had been done, was ten thousand times harder than action!
All the faculties of her reason were in favour of her decision, but what has the reason to do with the glance of an eye, or the touch of a hand, of the confiding commune of a soul in sympathy with one's own?
She understood him better than any other woman ever should. It was her anxiety that he should stand high in his own regard that made her jealous of his little weaknesses, and they were little, and only weaknesses after all, and only weaknesses in a giant, not the weaknesses of a man of common clay. If she had loved more what he was to her than what she dreamed he might be to himself and all the world, she would have taken no trouble in these matters that angered him to fury.