refuge with Leslie Dymock, but finally trapped, captured, yielding—yielding herself to a storm of passion that something uncontrollable in her own nature rose up to meet. “Seeing her in this light, I am overcome, not only with my stupidity and blindness, but with my guilt. Yet she was not altogether unhappy. It is true that Rawdon ill-treated and was unfaithful to her almost from the first, but it is also true that in their moments of reconciliation, which were as frequent as their estrangements, that is to say, very frequent indeed—in these moments of reconciliation she found consolation in the renewal of their curiously satisfying communion. I don’t pretend to understand this. Ruth loved me—she has told me so, and I know, without argument, that she is speaking the truth—yet she found pleasure in the love of another man, and even a certain grim pleasure in his ill-treatment of her. Or should I reverse my order, finding more marvel in her humility under his caresses than under his blows? “What am I to believe? that she is cursed with a dual nature, the one coarse and unbridled, the other delicate, conventional, practical, motherly, refined? Have I hit the nail on the head? And is it, can it be, the result of the separate, antagonistic strains in her blood, the southern and the northern legacy? Did she love Westmacott with the one, and me with the other? I am afraid to pry deeper into this mystery, for who can tell what taint of his blood may not appear suddenly to stain the clear waters of his life? “This, then, is Ruth, but in Westmacott the southern strain seems to be dominant; the clear English waters are tainted through and through. He is a creature of pure instinct, and when his instinct is aroused no logic, no reason will hold him, any more than a silk ribbon will hold a bucking horse. Ruth has told me of her life with him after he had gained possession of her, all his humility gone, changed into a domineering brutality; sometimes he would sit sulkily for hours, smoking and playing cards, and then would catch her to him and half strangle her with his kisses. She seems to have lived with him, the spirit crushed from her, meek and submissive to his will. I remembered the days when he used to lounge about Pennistans’, leaning against the doorpost staring at her, and when she in disdain and contempt would clatter her milk-pans while singing at the top of her voice. Westmacott, I thought grimly, had had his own revenge. “Once, as you know, she rebelled, but I do not think you know what drove her to it. Westmacott had brought another woman home to the farm, and had ordered his wife to draw cider for them both. When she refused, he struck her so that she staggered and fell in a corner of the room. She then collected her children and walked straight over to her father’s house. How she tried to shoot Westmacott you know, for you were there.—I can’t think about that story.