_That_ halted her again, for she knew now that it was
something within herself that threatened her. But it was his
nearness to her that evoked it.
For she saw, now that her real inclination was to be with him, that
she had liked him from the first, had found him agreeable--pleasant
past belief--and that, although there seemed to be no reason for
her liking, no excuse, nothing to explain her half-fearful pleasure
in his presence, and her desire for it, she did desire it. And for
the first time since her widowhood she felt that she had been
living her life out along lines that lay closer to solitude than to
the happy freedom of which she had reluctantly dreamed locked in
the manacles of a loveless marriage.
For her marriage had been one of romantic pity, born of the
ignorance of her immaturity; and she was very young when she became
the wife of Warfield Paige--Celia's brother--a gentle,
sweet-tempered invalid, dreamy, romantic, and pitifully confident
of life, the days of which were already numbered.
Of the spiritual passions she knew a little--of the passion of
pity, of consent, of self-sacrifice, of response to spiritual need.
But neither in her early immaturity nor in later adolescence had
she ever before entertained even the most innocent inclination for
a man.
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