She opened her
eyes to shut out these sights and that sound of heartache.
She gazed round, drew a long breath of relief. She had almost
been afraid to look round lest she should find that her escape
had been only a dream. And now the road she had chosen--or,
rather, the only road she could take--the road with Freddie
Palmer--seemed attractive, even dazzling. What she could not
like, she would ignore--and how easily she, after her
experience, could do that! What she could not ignore she
would tolerate would compel herself to like.
Poor Clara!--Happy Clara!--better off in the dregs of the
river than she had ever been in the dregs of New York. She
shuddered. Then, as so often, the sense of the grotesque
thrust in, as out of place as jester in cap and bells at a
bier--and she smiled sardonically. "Why," thought she,
"in being squeamish about Freddie I'm showing that I'm more
respectable than the respectable women. There's hardly one
of them that doesn't swallow worse doses with less excuse or
no excuse at all--and without so much as a wry face."
XX
IN the ten days on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Mr. and
Mrs. Palmer, as the passenger list declared them, planned the
early stages of their campaign. They must keep to themselves,
must make no acquaintances, no social entanglements of any
kind, until they had effected the exterior transformation
which was to be the first stride--and a very long one, they
felt--toward the conquest of the world that commands all the
other worlds.
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