Well, we will not go over the story: we know that he had triumphed. Yes,
in spite of her terror of the future, in spite of some withholding mystery
in the past, she had granted him--or rather she had not been able to
prevent him from seizing--her passionate affection. She had uttered a
promise which, a month before, she would not have dreamed herself capable
of making.
In so doing she had acquired an almost unendurable happiness. It was one
of those mighty and terrible joys which are like the effect of opium--one
of those joys which condense life and abbreviate it, which excite and yet
stupefy, which intoxicate and kill. With this in her heart she lived ten
of her old days in one, but also she drew for those ten days upon her
future.
After one of her interviews with Leighton, after an hour of throbbing, of
trembling, of vivid but confused emotions, her face would be as pale as
death, and her weakness such that she could hardly speak. The hands which,
while they clung to his, had been soft and moist, became dry and hot as
with fever, and then cold as ice. At night she could scarcely sleep: for
hours her brain throbbed with the thought of him, and of what stood
between him and her. In the morning she was heavy with headache, dizzy,
faint, hysterical; yet the moment she saw him again she was all life, all
freshness.
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