know that I hold
myself back. For I hate Florence. I hate Florence with such a hatred
that I would not spare her an eternity of loneliness. She need not have
done what she did. She was an American, a New Englander. She had not the
hot passions of these Europeans. She cut out that poor imbecile of an
Edward--and I pray God that he is really at peace, clasped close in the
arms of that poor, poor girl! And, no doubt, Maisie Maidan will find her
young husband again, and Leonora will burn, clear and serene, a northern
light and one of the archangels of God. And me.... Well, perhaps, they
will find me an elevator to run.... But Florence... .

She should not have done it. She should not have done it. It was playing
it too low down. She cut out poor dear Edward from sheer vanity;
she meddled between him and Leonora from a sheer, imbecile spirit of
district visiting. Do you understand that, whilst she was Edward's
mistress, she was perpetually trying to reunite him to his wife? She
would gabble on to Leonora about forgiveness--treating the subject from
the bright, American point of view. And Leonora would treat her like the
whore she was. Once she said to Florence in the early morning:

"You come to me straight out of his bed to tell me that that is my
proper place. I know it, thank you."

But even that could not stop Florence. She went on saying that it was
her ambition to leave this world a little brighter by the passage of her
brief life, and how thankfully she would leave Edward, whom she thought
she had brought to a right frame of mind, if Leonora would only give him
a chance. He needed, she said, tenderness beyond anything.

And Leonora would answer--for she put up with this outrage for
years--Leonora, as I understand, would answer something like:

"Yes, you would give him up. And you would go on writing to each other
in secret, and committing adultery in hired rooms. I know the pair
of you, you know. No. I prefer the situation as it is." Half the time
Florence would ignore Leonora's remarks. She would think they were not
quite ladylike. The other half of the time she would try to persuade
Leonora that her love for Edward was quite spiritual--on account of her
heart. Once she said:

"If you can believe that of Maisie Maidan, as you say you do, why cannot
you believe it of me?" Leonora was, I understand, doing her hair at
that time in front of the mirror in her bedroom. And she looked round
at Florence, to whom she di