She did not
know why she had relinquished the thought of Stephen since her visit to
the house in East Leigh Street; but some deep instinct warned her that
she had widened the gulf between them by her excursion with Gershom. "I
can't help it," she thought sensibly enough. "There wasn't anything in
it before that, and I might as well go ahead and stop thinking about
it." Her anger at Stephen's neglect had melted into a vague and
impersonal resentment, a resentment, rather for the dying woman than for
herself, against all the needless cruelties of life. Even Gershom, even
the unspeakable Gershom, had had discernment enough to see that
something good in that poor woman had been blighted and crushed. Was it
true that no one was ever given the chance to be one's best? Was this
true, not only of that dying woman, but of her father and Stephen and
Corinna and herself and all human beings everywhere?
Lingering a moment near the Washington monument, she stood watching the
straggling groups that were crossing the Square.
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