So elastic and so
subtle, so interwoven of consideration for others and consideration for
herself, so old, so very old, this instinct wrapped her from all eyes,
like a suit of armour of the finest chain. The night must have been
black indeed when she took that off and lay without it in the darkness.
With the first light she put it on again, and stealing from bed, bathed
long and stealthily those eyes which felt as though they had been burned
all night; thence went to the open window and leaned out. Dawn had
passed, the birds were at morning music. Down there in the garden her
flowers were meshed with the grey dew, and the trees were grey, spun
with haze; dim and spectrelike, the old hunter, with his nose on the
paddock rail, dozed in the summer mist.
And all that had been to her like prison out there, and all that she had
loved, stole up on the breath of the unaired morning, and kept beating
in her face, fluttering at the white linen above her heart like the
wings of birds flying.
The first morning song ceased, and at the silence the sun smiled out in
golden irony, and everything was shot with colour. A wan glow fell on
Mrs. Pendyce's spirit, that for so many hours had been heavy and grey in
lonely resolution. For to her gentle soul, unused to action, shrinking
from violence, whose strength was the gift of the ages, passed into it
against her very nature, the resolution she had formed was full of pain.
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