The pitiful and hopeless part
of it is that if she had been in sympathy with them, Jack would have gone
on in his frivolous career at an accelerated pace. It was not absence of
love, it was not unfaithfulness, that made Jack enjoy the hours he spent
with Carmen, or with the pleasing and not too fastidious Miss Tavish,
with a zest that was wanting to his hours at home. If he had been upon a
sinking steamboat with the three women, and could have saved only one of
them, he would not have had a moment's hesitation in rescuing Edith and
letting the other two sink out of his life. The character is not
unusual, nor the situation uncommon. What is a woman to do? Her very
virtues are enemies of her peace; if she appears as a constant check and
monitor, she repels; if she weakly acquiesces, the stream will flow over
both of them. The dilemma seems hopeless.
It would be a mistake to suppose that either Edith or Jack put their
relations in any such definite shape as this. He was unthinking. She
was too high-spirited, too confident of her position, to be assailed by
such fears. And it must be said, since she was a woman, that she had the
consciousness of power which goes along with the possession of loveliness
and keen wit.
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