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Updated: June 22, 2025
"No, no, it's not final," Alan answered, feeling the woman's influence course through body and blood to his quivering fingertips. Magical touches stirred him. "How can it be final, Herminia, when you look at me like that? How can it be final, when you're so gracious, so graceful, so beautiful? Oh, my child, I am a man; don't play too hard on those fiercest chords in my nature."
For its name's sake alone, Herminia was prepared to admire the antique Umbrian capital. And Alan loved it so much, and was so determined she ought to love it too, that she was ready to be pleased with everything in it. Until she arrived there and then, oh, poor heart, what a grievous disappointment!
It was late before she finished. When her manuscript was complete, she slipped out and posted it to a weekly paper. It appeared that same Saturday, and was the beginning of Herminia's most valuable connection. But even after she had posted it the distracted mother could not pause or rest. Dolly tossed and turned in her sleep, and Herminia sat watching her. She pined for sympathy.
Till then, I command you, keep far away from me, and from your untainted sisters." The child felt her mother's hand tremble quivering in her own, as she led her from the church; but never a word did Herminia say, lest her heart should break with it. As soon as she was outside, little Dolly looked up at her.
Her cheek was aglow with virginal shrinking as she opened the door, and welcomed Alan in. But she held out her hand just as frankly as ever to the man of her free choice as he advanced to greet her. Alan caught her in his arms and kissed her forehead tenderly. And thus was Herminia Barton's espousal consummated. The next six months were the happiest time of her life, for Herminia.
But when the widowed mother is one who has never been a wife, when in addition to all these pangs of bereavement and fear, she has further to face the contempt and hostility of a sneering world, as Herminia had to face it, then, indeed, her lot becomes well-nigh insupportable; it is almost more than human nature can bear up against. So Herminia found it.
Merrick still irresolute, and anxious in his way to do what he thought was just, drew a roll of Italian bank notes from his waistcoat pocket, and laid them on the table. "You may find these useful," he said, as he retreated awkwardly. Herminia turned upon him with the just wrath of a great nature outraged. "Take them up!" she cried fiercely. "Don't pollute my table!"
Alan saw at once it is not the intrinsic moral value of an act such people think about, but the light in which it is regarded by a selfish society. Unchastity, it has been well said, is union without love; and Alan would have none of it. He went back to Herminia more than ever convinced of that spotless woman's moral superiority to every one else he had ever met with.
But if only she had seen the conscious flush with which Herminia received her visitor that afternoon, she would have been confirmed in her belief that Herminia, after all, in spite of her learning, was much like other girls. In which conclusion Mrs. Dewsbury would not in the end have been fully justified.
Herminia had acted through life to a great extent with the idea ever consciously present to her mind that she must answer to Dolly for every act and every feeling. She had done all she did with a deep sense of responsibility. Now it loomed by degrees upon her aching heart that Dolly's verdict would in almost every case be a hostile one.
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