pathy, her desire to do what people expected
of her, she despised his opinions as much as the first day. Olive
Chancellor was able to a certain extent to believe what she wished to
believe, and that was one reason why she had twisted Verena's flight
from New York, just after she let her friend see how much she should
like to drink deeper of the cup, into a warrant for living in a fool's
paradise. If she had been less afraid, she would have read things more
clearly; she would have seen that we don't run away from people unless
we fear them and that we don't fear them unless we know that we are
unarmed. Verena feared Basil Ransom now (though this time she declined
to run); but now she had taken up her weapons, she had told Olive she
was exposed, she had asked _her_ to be her defence. Poor Olive was
stricken as she had never been before, but the extremity of her danger
gave her a desperate energy. The only comfort in her situation was that
this time Verena had confessed her peril, had thrown herself into her
hands. "I like him--I can't help it--I do like him. I don't want to
marry him, I don't want to embrace his ideas, which are unspeakably
false and horrible; but I like him better than any gentleman I have
seen." So much as this the girl announced to her friend as soon as the
conversation of which I have just given a sketch was resumed, as it was
very soon, you may be sure, and very often, in the course of the next
few days. That was her way of saying that a great crisis had arrived in
her life, and the statement needed very little amplification to stand as
a shy avowal that she too had succumbed to the universal passion. Olive
had had her suspicions, her terrors, before; but she perceived now how
idle and foolish they had been, and that this was a different affair
from any of the "phases" of which she had hitherto anxiously watched the
development. As I say, she felt it to be a considerable mercy that
Verena's attitude was frank, for it gave her something to take hold of;
she could no longer be put off with sophistries about receiving visits
from handsome and unscrupulous young men for the sake of the
opportunities it gave one to convert them. She took hold, accordingly,
with passion, with fury; after the shock of Ransom's arrival had passed
away she determined that he should not find her chilled into dumb
submission. Verena had told her that she wanted her to hold her tight,
to rescue her; and there was no fear that, for