The Immortal Moment: The Story of Kitty TailleurSinclair, May
General
The Immortal Moment: The Story of Kitty Tailleur
Sinclair, May
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
If Robert found out what she was before he married her, he would have
to give her up because of them. She knew better than he did the hold she
had over him. She had tried to keep him in ignorance of her power, so
great was her terror of what it might do to him, and to her through him.
Yet, with all her sad science, she remained uncertain of his ultimate
behaviour. That was the charm and the danger of him. For fear of some
undiscovered, uncalculated quality in him she had held herself back; she
had been careful how she touched him, how she looked at him, lest her
hands or her eyes should betray her; lest in his heart he should call
her by her name, and fling her from him because of them. Whereas, but
for them, she judged that whatever she was he would not give her up. She
was not quite sure (you couldn't say _what_ a man like Robert would or
wouldn't do), but she felt that if she could have had him to herself, if
there had been only he and she, facing the world, then, for sheer
chivalry, he simply couldn't have left her. Even now, once he was
married to her it would be all right; he couldn't give her up or leave
her; the worst he could do would be to separate her from them.
There was really no reason then why she should be frightened. He was
going to marry her very soon. She knew that, by her science, though he
had not said so. She would be all right. She would be very careful. It
wasn't as if she didn't want to be nice and to do all the proper things.
And so Kitty cast off care.
Only, as she waited in the room prepared for the children, she looked at
herself in the glass, once, to make sure that there was nothing in her
face that could betray her. No; Nature had spared her as yet and her
youth was good to her. Her face looked back at her, triumphantly
reticent, innocent of memory, holding her charm, a secret beyond the
secrets of corruption, as her perfect body held the mystery and the
prophecy of her power. Besides, her face was different now from what it
had been. Wilfrid had intimated to her that it was different. It was the
face that Robert loved; it had the look that told him that she loved
him, a look it never wore for any other man. Even now as she thought of
him it lightened and grew rosy. She saw it herself and wondered and took
hope. "That's how I look when I'm happy, is it? I'm always happy when
I'm with him, so," she reasoned, "he will always see me like that; and
it will be all right."
Anyhow, there would be no unhappiness about his pretty lady when he came
back with them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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