It was not Rosalie Vanderpoel who pressed her colourless face
against the glass of the window, looking out at the flying trees; it was
the wife of Nigel Anstruthers, and suddenly, by some hideous magic, she
had been snatched from the world to which she belonged and was being
dragged by a gaoler to a prison from which she did not know how to
escape. Already Nigel had managed to convey to her that in England a
woman who was married could do nothing to defend herself against her
husband, and that to endeavour to do anything was the last impossible
touch of vulgar ignominy.
The vivid realisation of the situation seized upon her like a possession
as she glanced sideways at her bridegroom and hurriedly glanced away
again with a little hysterical shudder. New York, good-tempered,
lenient, free New York, was millions of miles away and Nigel was so
loathly near and--and so ugly. She had never known before that he was so
ugly, that his face was so heavy, his skin so thick and coarse and his
expression so evilly ill-tempered. She was not sufficiently analytical
to be conscious that she had with one bound leaped to the appalling
point of feeling uncontrollable physical abhorrence of the creature
to whom she was chained for life.
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