Since then she had passed from the twilight of little society
shams and convenient, conventional self-deceivings into the glory where
only Truth was visible or audible.
At last she was forced to lift her eyes, compelled by his. She tried to
look past him, straight into the sunset, a furnace that burned up human
misgivings. But her gaze was stopped on the way by Hilliard's.
"May I read what you've written?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, and gave him the book. While he read, she drew in deep
breaths, gathering strength against an emergency, if an emergency were to
come. But she hoped it would not. She wanted, oh, so much! to keep him for
a comrade--for the comrade who had made this day the best day of her life.
She did not want to stop playing, because if it had come to earnest, deep
realities, as she was afraid it must come now, there would be no place for
Nick Hilliard in her future--the future of Paolo di Sereno's disillusioned
wife. "Still, here under these trees, I could tell him everything better
than I could tell it anywhere else, and make him understand, and even
forgive," she thought. "Without fear, I could let him know that I care for
him, and that he has been the only man, except father, who has meant
anything great to the _real_ me.
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