nothing, to do nothing.
Supposing he had suppressed both his passion and the poems that
immortalized it, what would she have thought of him then? Would she
not have thought that he had either dedicated to her a thing that he
was afterwards ashamed of, or that he had meant nothing by the
dedication?

"Don't you see what you have done?" she said. "You've made me wish I
had never come here and that I'd never seen you again. It was only the
other night--the dear little girl--she came up here and sat with me,
and we had a talk. We talked about you. She told me how she came to
know you, and how good you'd been to her and how long it was before
either of you knew. She told me things about herself. She is very
shy--very reserved--but she let me see how much she cares--and how
much you care. Think what you must be to her. She has no father and no
mother, she has nobody but you. She told me that. And then--she took
me up to her room and showed me all her pretty things. She was so
happy--and how can I look at her again? She would hate me if she knew;
and I couldn't blame her, poor child. She could never understand that
it was not my fault."

But as she said it her conscience rose in contradiction and told her
that it was her fault. Her fault in the very beginning for drawing him
into an intimacy that his youth and inexperience made dangerous. Her
fault for sacrificing, yes, sacrificing him to that impulse to give
pleasure which had only meant giving pleasure to herself at his
expense. Her fault for endlessly refining on the facts of life, till
she lost all feeling of its simpler and more obvious issues. Kitty had
been right when she told her that she treated men as if they were
disembodied spirits. She had trusted too much to her own subtlety.
That was how all her blunders, had been made. If she had been cold as
well as subtle--but Lucia was capable of passionate indiscreet things
to be followed by torments of her pride. Her pride had only made
matters worse. It was her pride, in the beginning, that had blinded
her. When she had told Kitty that she was not the sort of woman to let
this sort of thing happen with this sort of man, she had summed up her
abiding attitude to one particular possibility. She had trusted to the
social gulf to keep her safe, apart. Afterwards, she knew that she had
not trusted so much to the social gulf. She had not been quite so
proud; neither, since Kitty had opened her eyes, had she been so
blind; bu