Why?
She looked at his fine face and manly figure; she recalled how
many good qualities he had. Why had she ceased to love him?
She thought perhaps some mystery of physical lack of sympathy
was in part responsible; then there was the fact that she
could not trust him. With many women, trust is not necessary
to love; on the contrary, distrust inflames love. It happened
not to be so with Susan Lenox. "I do not love him. I can
never love him again. And when he uses his power over me, I
shall begin to dislike him." The lost illusion! The dead
love! If she could call it back to life! But no--there it lay,
coffined, the gray of death upon its features. Her heart ached.
After the play Fitzalan took the authors and the leading lady,
Constance Francklyn, and Miss Lenox to supper in a private
room at Rector's. This was Miss Francklyn's first trial in a
leading part. She had small ability as an actress, having
never risen beyond the primer stage of mere posing and
declamation in which so many players are halted by their
vanity--the universal human vanity that is content with small
triumphs, or with purely imaginary triumphs. But she had a
notable figure of the lank, serpentine kind and a bad, sensual
face that harmonized with it. Especially in artificial light
she had an uncanny allure of the elemental, the wild animal in
the jungle. With every disposition and effort to use her
physical charms to further herself she would not have been
still struggling at twenty-eight, had she had so much as a
thimbleful of intelligence.
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