Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 5, 2025
Dusty, gusty Perugia! O baby, to be born for the freeing of woman, was it here, was it here you must draw your first breath, in an air polluted by the vices of centuries! Somewhat later in the day, they went out for a stroll through the town together. To Herminia's great relief, Alan never even noticed she had been crying. Man-like, he was absorbed in his own delight.
He was a younger man by many years than poor Alan had been; about Herminia's own age; a brilliant economist with a future before him. He aimed at the Cabinet. When first he met Herminia he was charmed at one glance by her chastened beauty, her breadth and depth of soul, her transparent sincerity of purpose and action. Those wistful eyes captured him.
Herminia's life through those six months was one unclouded honeymoon. On Sundays, she and Alan would go out of town together, and stroll across the breezy summit of Leith Hill, or among the brown heather and garrulous pine-woods that perfume the radiating spurs of Hind Head with their aromatic resins.
Though to be sure it had already struck the minds of Bower Lane that Herminia never went "to church nor chapel;" and when people cut themselves adrift from church and chapel, why, what sort of morality can you reasonably expect of them? Nevertheless, Herminia's manners were so sweet and engaging, to rich and poor alike, that Bower Lane seriously regretted what it took to be her lapse from grace.
He knew for the first time what it is to be in love; in love with a true and beautiful woman, not with his own future convenience and comfort. The keen fresh sense it quickened within him raised him for the moment some levels above himself. For Herminia's sake, he felt, he could do or dare anything.
The man hesitated a moment. Then he began to plead hard for reconsideration. But Herminia's mind was made up. She couldn't belie her past; she couldn't be false to the principles for whose sake she had staked and lost everything. "No, no," she said firmly, over and over again. "You must take me my own way, or you must go without me." And Harvey Kynaston couldn't consent to take her her own way.
For Herminia's devotion to principle was not less but far greater than Miss Smith-Waters's own; only, as it happened, the principles themselves were diametrically opposite. Herminia wrote her note with not a few tears for poor Miss Smith-Waters's disappointment.
Base souls would see in the sacrifice he made to Herminia's ideals, only the common story of a trustful woman cruelly betrayed by the man who pretended to love her, and would proceed to treat him with the coldness and contempt with which such a man deserves to be treated. As the morning wore on, this view of the matter obtruded itself more and more forcibly every moment on Alan.
If so, she would be sorry; for Alan, in whom the artistic sense was largely developed, loved his Italy dearly; and it would be a real cause of regret to her if she fell short in any way of Alan's expectations. Moreover, at table d'hote that evening, a slight episode occurred which roused to the full once more poor Herminia's tender conscience.
Yet Dolly had so few amusements of the sort young girls require that Herminia was overjoyed this opportunity should have come to her. She reproached herself not a little in her sensitive heart for even feeling sad at Dolly's joyous departure. Yet to Dolly it was a delight to escape from the atmosphere of Herminia's lodgings. Those calm heights chilled her.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking