a. He would have dismissed her from his mind
with the contempt she deserved, but, alas! he could not: she clung
there like a burr not to be dislodged saving by possession or a
beating--two shuddering alternatives--for she had become detestably
dear to him. His senses and his self-esteem conspired to heave her to
a pedestal where his eye strained upwards in bewilderment--that she
who was below him could be above him! This was astounding: she must be
pulled from her eminence and stamped back to her native depths by his
own indignant hoofs; thence she might be gloriously lifted again with
a calm, benignant, masculine hand shedding pardons and favors, and
perhaps a mollifying unguent for her bruises. Bruises! a knee, an
elbow--they were nothing; little damages which to kiss was to make
well again. Will not women cherish a bruise that it may be medicined
by male kisses? Nature and precedent have both sworn to it.... But she
was out of reach; his hand, high-flung as it might be, could not get
to her. He went furiously to the Phoenix Park, to St. Stephen's
Green, to outlying leafy spots and sheltered lanes, but she was in
none of these places. He even prowled about the neighborhood of her
home and could not meet her. Once he had seen Mary as she came along
the road, and he drew back into a doorway. A young man was marching by
her side, a young man who gabbled without ceasing and to whom Mary
chattered again with an equal volubility. As they passed by Mary
caught sight of him, and her face went flaming. She caught her
companion's arm, and they hurried down the road at a great pace....
She had never chattered to him. Always he had done the talking, and
she had been an obedient grateful listener. Nor did he quarrel with
her silence, but her reserve shocked him--it was a pretense, worse, a
lie, a masked and hooded falsehood. She had surrendered to him
willingly, and yet drew about her a protective armor of reserve
wherein she skulked immune to the arms which were lawfully victorious.
Is there, then, no loot for a conqueror? We demand the keys of the
City Walls and unrestricted entry, or our torches shall blaze again.
This chattering Mary was a girl whom he had never caught sight of at
all. She had been hiding from him even in his presence. In every
aspect she was an anger. But she could talk to the fellow with her
... a skinny whipper-snapper, whom the breath of a man could shred
into remote, eyeless vacuity. Was this man another i