Yet there was
something in them quite new to me. I had always rendered her justice
as to her cleverness, but I thought her acts were the instinctive
outcome of her nature. I had never supposed her capable of inventing
a whole system in order to support and justify the impulses of her
nature. This showed her in a somewhat nobler light, as it proved that
where I had suspected her of more or less mean calculation, she only
acted according to her own principles,--maybe bad, even terrible, but
always principles. For instance, I had suspected her of wanting to
marry me after Davis's death,--she proved me utterly in the wrong. She
herself began to talk about it. She confessed that if I were to ask
her for her hand she might not be able to refuse me, as she loved me
more than I believed (here as I am a living man I saw a warm blush
mounting to her neck and brow), but she knew this would never happen;
sooner or later I would leave her with a light heart,--but what of
that? If she dipped her hand into the water and felt the refreshing
coolness, should she refuse herself this delight because the sun would
suck the cool moisture?
Saying this she bent over the gunwale, which showed her figure in
all its immaculate perfection, and after plunging her hands into the
water, she stretched them out to me moist and pink and gleaming in
the sunshine.
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